1848 Serrell Large Manuscript Plat Map of 71st to 73rd Streets, West Side of Manhattan

Some of the Most Expensive Real Estate in New York City.

This is an 1848 John J. Serrell large-format manuscript plat map of a portion of the Upper West Side of Manhattan between 71st and 73rd Streets. Among other features, the map demonstrates the degree to which Manhattan's familiar grid pattern was misaligned with earlier properties in this portion of the island.

A Closer Look

This map covers an area between Eighth Avenue (now Central Park West) and 10th Avenue (Amsterdam Ave.) and between 71st and 73rd Streets, with some coverage onto the block between 73rd and 74th Streets. Today, this is one of New York's wealthiest neighborhoods, the heart of the Upper West Side, and includes renowned structures such as the Dakota, which occupies the western side of Central Park West between 72nd and 73rd Streets. (The sale noted here of eight consecutive lots, and indeed most of the block, to 'W.M. and F.A. Benjamin' suggests the origins of this large property.) Broadway, then known as Bloomingdale Road, cuts across the map diagonally at left, while Harsenville Road, an important east-west thoroughfare at the time, is traced at the bottom.

Dark shading indicates existing buildings, which were later razed to make way for the uniformly geometric blocks of mostly residential buildings. Blocks and lots are numbered throughout, with their size noted, along with pencil annotations (some and likely many from later dates). Many lots are marked as sold, particularly between 72nd and 73rd Street. A strip of land at the bottom records an 1859 sale to the heirs of Jacob Harsen, likely the grandfather of the man mentioned in the title, who originally owned much of this land in the early 19th century.

The blue band of 'Land of Reformed Dutch Church' was connected to the Bloomingdale Church, which the elder Harsen had helped found. It moved locations several times during the 19th century, but at this time existed along Harsenville Road near Bloomingdale Road. It had been built in the early 1810s and was torn down when Bloomingdale Road was widened in 1869. (The church is depicted in a plate in the 1862 edition of D. T. Valentine's Manual of the Corporation of City of New York.)

The Old Upper West Side

Being among the largest neighborhoods in Manhattan, the Upper West Side even today has a broad scope, encompassing everything between Central Park and the Hudson River. At the time of this map's production, when the area was still largely undeveloped, its reach was arguably even larger. In the early 19th century, although the structure for future urban development theoretically existed within the framework of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, only a handful of farms, impressive country homes, and small villages appeared sporadically along Bloomingdale Road, which gave its name to the Bloomingdale District (or just Bloomingdale) running all the way from W. 23rd St. (Chelsea) to 125th St. (Harlem). By the mid-19th century, the name Bloomingdale came to refer more specifically to the middle-upper portion of this district between 96th and 110th St., which grew up around manufacturing and shipping along the Hudson River, driven by the construction of the Hudson River Railroad. As a result, and despite its posh reputation nowadays, the Upper West Side was known at the time as something of a rowdy frontier full of squatters, taverns, and a large insane asylum.

But the area seen on this map, further south, was part of the distinct village of Harsenville (between 68th and 81st Sts.), built on the homestead of the late 18th-century settler Jacob Harsen and his wife Catherine Cosine. This land originally was acquired by the Dyckman family in the early 18th century; afterwards, tracing its exact ownership is difficult given the repetition of names (our Jacob had a father and grandson also named Jacob Harsen) and the complex interconnections between the closely-related Dutch settler families of Manhattan (Jacob and Catherine were first cousins). 71st Street was once known as Harsenville Road and was the main means of transportation between the East and West Sides of Manhattan in this area. During the French Revolution, dozens of noble French refugees settled in Harsenville, changing its character significantly and attracting eminent visitors from the old country, including Talleyrand and General Jean Victor Marie Moreau.

This map was made as greater changes were beckoning. The city's population was growing, its economy evolving (driven by railroads, among other developments), and its landscape changing, with the earliest concrete discussions of Central Park taking shape around this time. But in subsequent years, the Upper West Side saw a more gradual incorporation into the city's urban sprawl than the Upper East Side. One year after this map's production, eminent domain was used to claim some of the Harsen land to widen Bloomingdale Road, later renamed Broadway, as it had been further south. This also created a triangle of land narrowing to a point between Broadway and Tenth Avenue (at top-left here) that was later dubbed Verdi Square, where a lovely head house was built for the entrance to the 72nd Street Station of the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line. Still, the Harsenville neighborhood only really developed and filled in the lots laid out here in the late 1870s, after the opening of the Ninth Avenue Elevated (which, despite its name, followed Broadway in this part of Manhattan and was the predecessor to the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line). The old homesteads were torn down and modern residential buildings (brownstones, largely) were quickly thrown up, leaving little trace of the pre-existing neighborhood.

Publication History and Census

This manuscript map was prepared by City Surveyor John Junius Serrell in November 1848. As a manuscript map, this is an entirely unique work, and like Serrell's other maps, it was surely a key reference for urban planners for decades afterwards. No other maps with this title and scope are known to exist, while the New York Historical (previously known as the New-York Historical Society) holds a large collection of similar Serrell manuscript maps for other parts of the Upper West Side.

Cartographer

John Junius Serrell (July 3, 1815 - June 13, 1875) was a prominent surveyor, architect, and civil engineer in New York City in the mid-19th century. Born in London, England, Serrell emigrated with his family to the United States in his childhood. In 1839, he attained a clerkship with the City of New York's Finance Department, where he worked for eight years. Serrell's father, William, opened a civil engineering firm in New York, and John gained an understanding of the profession there. In 1844, he married Mary E. Syms (or Sims, 1822 - 1897), the daughter of a wealthy firearms dealer. (The couple had three sons.) The same year, he was appointed City Surveyor, a position he held for many years, during which he helped plot the city's extension into the Upper West Side, in particular. In 1866, he was appointed Consulting Engineer for Central Park, with a focus on the west side of the park, which had not been developed much at that time. An obituary described him as the 'first topographical engineer of the city' at this time. Unfortunately, at the peak of his prestige, Serrell became incapacitated by an illness. Serrell took a trip to Europe to attempt to regain his health, but to no avail, and after returning, he died in his home in Bayonne, New Jersey, and was buried in Brooklyn's Green-wood Cemetery. Serrell's long career with the city at a time when it was expanding rapidly meant that he produced many maps and surveys that would be consulted for urban planning and legal disputes for decades afterwards.

His brothers, Edward Wellman Serrell (1826 - 1906) and James E. Serrell (1820 - 1892), were also civil engineers, trained by their father and older brother John. Edward became an eminent railroad and bridge engineer and then distinguished himself during the Civil War, forming a volunteer regiment of engineers from New York (which also included James), designing Union fortifications, and building siege equipment (including a massive gun dubbed the 'Swamp Angel') during the siege of Charleston, South Carolina, becoming known after the war as 'the greatest of Civil War engineers.' James Serrell, like his brother John, was a surveyor with the City of New York, initially working with the Street Department. Like John, he had a decades-long career with the city, which included plans for sewers and for grading city streets, in addition to surveys, maps, and engineering plans.   Further Details...

Condition

Average. Manuscript pen, wash, pencil. On original linen. Loss and chipping to edges. Fragile. Could benefit from limited restoration, but presents handsomely as is.

References

Mott, H., The New York of Yesterday: A Descriptive Narrative of Old Bloomingdale, Its Topographical Features, Its Early Families and Their Genealogies...., (Bloomingdale [New York]: Putnam's) 1908.