Answer
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The cultural landscape of New York City has changed dramatically over time.
Early maps from the Mannahatta project show the island as forests, wetlands, and Lenape settlements. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch and English maps depict a small colonial town with farmland and winding roads at Manhattan’s tip. The 1811 Commissioners’ Plan imposed the grid, shaping all later growth.
By the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Sanborn fire-insurance maps reveal dense tenements, factories, and distinct immigrant neighborhoods such as Little Italy and the Lower East Side.
Mid-twentieth-century planning maps record the impact of Robert Moses’s highways, public housing, and urban renewal, which transformed or erased many communities.
Recent maps and GIS layers highlight rezoning, waterfront redevelopment, gentrification, and new parks. Oral histories from longtime residents complement these maps, showing how people experienced shifts in neighborhoods, from industrial decline to cultural revival. Together, maps and voices trace the city’s landscape from natural island to global metropolis.
