When Europeans first arrived in Manhattan, the area of the present Broad Street was a marsh. Ditches were soon dug to drain it. Later the ditches were widened and deepened to form canals that could accommodate small boats, at least at high tide. By the late 1640s the canals were lined with sheet piling to stabilize both their banks and the narrow streets on either side. The largest canal was the Heere Gracht, which is now Broad Street from Pearl to Beaver Streets. Its narrower continuation, from Beaver Street to a point just south of Exchange Place, was called the Prinzen Gracht. Both were named, perhaps in jest, after two elegant canals that had recently been built in Amsterdam. The Bever Gracht was a branch canal along what is now Beaver Street from Broadway west to about the present New Street. A drawback of the canals was that they also served as open sewers and stank terribly. The British filled them up in 1676.

There were some early schemes for a navigable canal in the vicinity of the present Canal Street but the canal that was actually built was purely a drainage canal.

In 1827 the Haerlem Canal Co. was granted permission to build a canal across Manhattan from the mouth of Harlem Creek, about the present 108th Street on the East River, to Manhattanville on the Hudson River. There was a groundbreaking ceremony the following year but the project never progressed much beyond that.

About 1816 Curtis and John Bolton converted two tidal creeks just south of Marble Hill into a power canal to run the mill of their nearby marble quarry. In the 1890s the Bolton Canal, also known as the Dyckman Canal, was enlarged to form part of the United States Ship Canal, connecting the Hudson and Harlem Rivers.

Some maps and directories spell it Catharine; others spell it Catherine. Sometimes it is spelled both ways on the same map. To avoid repetition I have stuck with the two-a spelling. If you're doing a search, remember to check it both ways

(L19-M20) Two group of piers and some related street widenings along the Hudson River between West 11th and 23rd Streets, undertaken in the early 1890s and completed in 1909. Most of the piers were demolished in the late 20th Century. The piers from West 11th Street to the West Washington Market (2) at Gansevoort Street were known as the Gansevoort Piers. The piers north of the market, from Bloomfield to 23rd Streets, were known as the Chelsea Piers. . Four of the larger surviving piers, between 17th and 22nd Streets, are now the sports and recreation complex called the Chelsea Piers. See also Thirteenth Avenue.

A large freshwater pond, irregular in shape, in the area roughly bounded by today's Duane, Centre, Walker, Canal and Mulberry Streets, and Cardinal Hayes Place. The name derives from the Dutch Kalck, meaning chalk or lime, and probably refers to the piles of shells left by Indians who had harvested oysters nearby. The name is also found spelled Kolck, Kalk, etc. The pond was an important source of drinking water in colonial times but became progressively more polluted. It was filled in between 1802 and 1813. See also Five Points.

At the beginning of the 19th Century the Common Council wrestled unsuccessfully with the problem of laying out new streets. Unable to resolve the conflicting demands of landowners, the city asked the state to step in. In 1807 the legislature appointed a commission of three prominent citizens, John Rutherfurd, Gouverneur Morris and Simeon De Witt. They were to "lay out streets of such extent and direction as to them shall seem most conducive to public good." The commissioners selected John Randel, Jr. as their chief surveyor.

Their jurisdiction began at an irregular line running through the present Gansevoort Street and Greenwich Avenue, Art Street, the Bowery and the present East Houston Street. The plan they issued in 1811 was essentially a river-to-river rectangular grid reaching to 155th Street. To lay out streets beyond that , they said, would encourage speculation. Only Tenth Avenue was carried to the end of the island to connect with the Kings Bridge. In that original plan, Broadway and the Bowery were allowed to continue only as far as their junction at what is now Union Square. The remainder of Broadway and the Bowery, as well as all other roads inconsistent with the grid, were to be closed.

Within the grid the Commissioners provided a few relatively small public squares, a Market Square and a large military training ground called The Parade (1). Anticipating criticism over the absence of any large park, the Commission claimed that the city would be sufficiently ventilated by its adjacent rivers.

The guiding principle of the plan was to permit the most economical subdivision of land into convenient, rectangular building lots since, as the Commission said, rectangular houses were the cheapest to build and the most convenient to live in.. The crosstown streets were 200 feet apart. This yielded blocks that could be easily divided into 25 x 100-foot building lots, a size that had already become standard.

Most crosstown streets were 60 feet wide. A few major ones were 100 feet wide, beginning with 14th Street, the first that would run uninterrupted from river to river.

There were twelve numbered avenues, each 100 feet wide, running parallel to the axis of Manhattan Island. First Avenue was the easternmost avenue that would run continuously to Harlem, uninterrupted by indentations in the shoreline. The shorter avenues to the east were assigned letters A through D. Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Avenues were on the lines of existing roads laid out in Goerck's 1796 subdivision of the Common Lands. Third Avenue was on the line of Harlem Avenue, which had been laid out afterward along the eastern edge of the Common Lands.

Many critics have deplored the monotony of the Commissioners' Plan, but others have admired the vistas afforded by its long avenues. The chief fault of the plan--and this was an issue from the beginning--was that it ignored topography. To build its ruler-straight streets, hills were cut down, valleys filled in and streams buried. Since the cost of street grading and drainage was levied on the adjacent property owners, there was opposition on both aesthetic and cost grounds.

Over the next half century there were many modifications to the original plan. It proved impractical to close Broadway and a few other old roads, and they were restored to the official map. The Parade Ground shrank and became Madison Square. The huge Market Square was eliminated but part of it became the present Tompkins Square. Madison and Lexington Avenues were inserted in the overlong blocks between Third and Fifth Avenues. Central Park was established and some of the other original squares were eliminated. In the 1860s and '70s the city bowed to the realities of topography and laid out curving streets and additional parks on Manhattan's steeper uptown slopes.

Under its British colonial charters, the City of New York had a legal status much closer to that of a private corporation than to a present-day municipality. (The city government was routinely referred to as "the Corporation" well into the 20th Century.) The early charters endowed the corporation with the ownership of all vacant and unclaimed land on Manhattan Island. Part of this endowment consisted of underwater lands around the margins of the island. (See Wharves, Piers and Slips) The balance was an irregular swath running up the middle of the island from about 23rd Street to the vicinity of the present Central Park Reservoir, where it met the boundary line of the Town of Harlem. It is this upland strip, which in places was more than a half-mile wide, that is usually meant by the term Common Lands.

Through the 18th and early 19th centuries, the city's general practice was to rent parcels of the Common Lands to farmers and others on long-term leases. But numerous parcels were conveyed outright to private buyers or, at nominal cost, to religious and charitable institutions. After the Revolution the city came under increasing pressure to sell its Common Lands, both to accommodate the city's growth and to raise money for public improvements. In 1785 and 1796 the Common Lands, then totaling nearly two square miles, were divided into lots in two surveys by Casimir Goerck. The roads laid out on these surveys determined the lines of the present Park, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. The Common Lands were nearly all sold off by the mid-19th century. A good chunk of them had to be bought back to create Central Park. See also Harlem.

This point of land on the East River was also called Crown Point during the British period. It was an important landmark for navigators for 300 years. On older maps and documents it is usually spelled Corlaers, but since the early 19th Century the spelling has been anglicized to Corlears. It was named after Jacobus van Corlaer, who settled there prior to 1640. The original location of Corlaers Hook is now obscured by shoreline landfill. It was near the east end of the present pedestrian bridge over the FDR Drive near Cherry Street.