The excellent historical blog Ephemeral New York has a post today about the 1660 Costello Plan, referred to by the New York Public Library as the “earliest known plan of New Amsterdam and the only one dating from the Dutch period.”
To put the original Costello Plan into a present-day context, I’ve overlaid it on Google Earth and made these screenshots of lower Manhattan (click the images to see larger versions):
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| North is up in this map. Look how much of present day New York would have been underwater back in 1660! Manhattan’s west coast would have been present-day Greenwich Street, and the south and east cost is along present-day Pearl Street. |
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| In this map, North is to the upper-right. A couple of notable things: Aptly named Wall Street was a wall; Broad Street was a canal. Very cool that many streets of today still follow routes from this 1660’s plan, including Broadway, Beaver Street, Exchange Place, William Street and Stone Street, just to name a few. |
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| And really zooming in, look at the quaint little dock on the waterfront near the present-day intersection of Moore Street and Pearl Street. Also, see the entrance to the canal that runs along present-day Broad Street. |
The website Curbed ran a follow-up post on the Costello Plan containing additional interesting details, including why a Dutch plan has an Italian name.
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