How Never-Built Architecture Negotiated New York City's Grid

The Great Fire of 1776 devastated nearly a quarter of Manhattan’s building stock. Out of ruin, the 18th-century ruling elite saw opportunity: They could remake the city into something more orderly, resilient, and profitable than what the winding, narrow streets of yore had allowed. The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 inscribed an orderly crosshatch of streets onto the hilly island. An easily navigable city, with easily sub-dividable lots, emerged.

Here was the grid: the greatest conceivable boon to New York’s real-estate market. Its standardized parcels of land turned the city into a chessboard, with developers vying to dominate premium spaces. The grid’s relentless constraints may have pushed many buildings towards uniformity, but the parameters also prodded architects to new creative heights. Some of those more daring visions stand today—take the Chrysler building, or Bjarke Ingels’ new West Side pyramid—but many of them don’t. Tucked away in archives, desk drawers, and folios are thousands of unseen, wild-eyed answers to the question of how to use space in New York City.