How Was New York City Built

The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 laid a rectangular grid over almost all of Manhattan above Houston Street, ignoring the terrain entirely. Everything below it, laid out before the plan, keeps the tangled street pattern of the Dutch and colonial town — which is why downtown is where visitors get lost.

Central Park was carved out of that grid and designed by Olmsted and Vaux from 1858. It is entirely artificial: every lake, meadow and outcrop-framed view was built.

The skyline is a product of law as much as engineering. The 1916 zoning resolution, passed after a single tower darkened the streets around it, required buildings to step back as they rose — producing the wedding-cake silhouettes of the 1920s and 1930s, the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building among them.

Later towers are glass boxes on plazas, a 1961 rule change, and the newest are the very thin supertalls along the southern edge of Central Park.