Right Angles: The Man Who Drew Manhattan’s Street Grid

Detail of 1819 map of Manhattan by cartographer and surveyor John Randel Jr. showing the 116th Street area as farmland Just a few years after Lewis and Clark's famous expedition to the great Northwest, another intrepid American set out on a journey through challenging terrain at the government's behest. In 1808, John Randel Jr., a young surveyor, was charged with mapping Manhattan Island and laying out the street grid that, for 200 years, has shaped and spurred the growth of New York City. In 2004, Marguerite Holloway , an assistant professor at the School of Journalism , found herself writing about the Mannahatta Project—an effort by environmental scientists to "recreate" Manhattan in its natural state. The scientists relied in part on Randel's data. Fascinated by tales of the Albany-born surveyor (1787-1865), she says, "I tried to find out as much as I could about him—at the time, there was very little. It became an obsession." Holloway's obsession has turned into a biography of Randel that will be published by W.W. Norton.