Map of the City of New York North of 155th St. Showing the progress made in laying out Streets, Avenues, Roads, Public Squares and Places by the Commissioners of Central Park

New York: Edward S. Ewen, 1873. Hand colored lithographed folding map, sectioned and linen-backed as issued. 24 x 67 inches. Folds in publisher's cloth case, upper cover detached, publisher's title on the front pastedown. Signature on verso dated 1873. Hand colored lithographed folding map, sectioned and linen-backed as issued. 24 x 67 inches. Early Large Scale Mapping of the Development of Upper Manhattan. The famed Commissioner's plan of 1811, which laid out New York's street's in the grid pattern which would dictate the city's development, anticipate its massive population growth in the 19th century and cartographically define the city to this day, ended ubruptly and arbitrarily at 155th street. In 1865, Comptroller of the Central Park Commission Andrew Haswell Green began planning for development north of the grid. With the war at an end and with the construction of Central Park completed, Green saw the need for the development of Manhattan north of the park and the advantages of it being accomplished in a consistent, though improved, manner which would better take into account the area's terrain. He published his report, titled Communication to the Commissioners of the Central Park relative to the Laying Out of the Island above 155th Street, in the Tenth Annual Central Park Report in December 1865 and the essay would prove an important contribution in the historiography of city planning and preservation, anticipating more modern principles.

Work began immediately in surveying, planning and building the infrastructure. Early maps of the the project appeared in the Central Park Commission reports, but the present map by Edward Ewen was the first separately-published large-scale mapping of the plan. The map is scarce, with only a handful of recorded copies in institutions (New York Public Library, New York State Library, Stony Brook Univ. and Yale). Phillips, p. 538