Talk:Commissioners' Plan of 1811

Untitled

The article was edited by 207.237.92.187 to state that the plan divided Manhattan into about "200 long, narrow blocks", instead of the 2000 that was previously stated. I've changed it back. The plan divides Manhattan into a grid of dimensions approximately 155 (streets) by 12 (avenues), and 155 times 12 is 1860, which is about 2000. Izzycat 01:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Actual distance between avenues (mostly near 14th Street, if that matters)

I'm calculating this from a series of 1879 Bromley plats on the David Rumsey Map Collection.

• 11-10, 10-9, 9-8, 8-7, 7-6: 900 ft/0.17 mi (100 road, 800 block)
• 6-5, 5-4, 4-3: 1020 ft/0.19 mi (100 road, 920 block)
• 3-2: 710 ft/0.13 mi (100 road, 610 block)
• 2-1: 750 ft/0.14 mi (100 road, 650 block)
• 1-A: 703 ft/0.13 mi (90 road, 613 block)
• A-B: 736 ft/0.14 mi (70 road, 666 block)
• B-C, C-D: 746 ft/0.14 mi (70 road, 676 block)

--NE2 14:26, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Wide streets

The normal width is 60 feet.

  It should be pointed out here that the 60' number above includes the 15' sidewalks on
  each side. This would make the streets (as determined by the 'blacktop' surfacing)
  only 30'. The 100' avenue measurement is also affected, but is not as uniform, with
  the sidewalk widths varying. The numbers here (60' and 100') are from property line
  to property line.
  Frunobulax (talk) 17:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• As I understand it, the sidewalk is part of the property. The 60' and 100' widths are from curb to curb. Alansohn (talk) 18:52, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I am an architecture/engineering professional that is working re-drafting an UES site plan as I write this, which is the reason I am reading about this subject here in the first place. I am referencing the Sanborn Manhattan maps constantly in order to get the property lines correct for a 10 block area. I do not know for certain which way the 'sidewalk ownership' issue falls. But the 60' and 100' measures are basically from brickface to brickface; that is, from the facade of the building on one side of the street/avenue to the facade of the building on the other side. This much I am certain of. Plus, I took a tape measure to both sidewalks and the street to make sure they came out to 60', which they did. Frunobulax (talk) 20:22, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

• 14th Street, 100 feet
• 23rd Street, 100 feet
• 34th Street, 100 feet
• 42nd Street, 100 feet
• 57th Street, 100 feet
• 59th Street, 100 feet along Central Park only
• 72nd Street, 100 feet
• 79th Street, 100 feet
• 86th Street, 100 feet
• 96th Street, 100 feet
• 106th Street, 100 feet
• 110th Street, 60 feet east of Central Park; 80 feet west of 9th; 125 feet between 8th and 9th; 85? feet along Central Park [1] (was 60 in 1891)
• 116th Street, 100 feet
• 125th Street, 100 feet (including LaSalle Street; the diagonal portion is also 100 feet)
• 135th Street, 100 feet
• 145th Street, 100 feet
• 155th Street, 100 feet
• 165th Street was to be 100 feet but does not seem to have been built that way
• 175th Street, 100 feet (it doesn't look like this was built as such)
• 185th Street, 100 feet west of Broadway (never built there)
• 195th Street, 100 feet (never built, period)
• 205th Street, 100 feet west of 10th Avenue (never built there)
• 207th Street, 100 feet? (east of 10th Avenue; widened for the bridge [2])
• 215th Street, 100 feet
• 225th Street, 100 feet

Block widths (even next to wide streets)

• 212 feet, 1st to 2nd
• 212 or 211.11 feet, 2nd to 3rd
• 192 or 192.1 feet, 3rd to 4th
• 192.1 feet, 4th to 5th
• 194.125 feet, 5th to 6th
• 181.9 feet, 6th to 7th
• 195 feet, 7th to 8th
• 187.10 feet, 8th to 9th
• 184.6 feet, 9th to 10th
• 189.7 feet, 10th to 11th
• 206.6 feet, 11th to 16th
• 184 feet, 16th to 21st
• 197.6 feet, 21st to 42nd
• 200.10 feet, 42nd to 71st
• 204.4 feet, 71st to 86th
• 201.5 feet, 86th to 96th
• 201.10 feet, 96th to 125th
• 199.10 feet, 125th to at least 204th

The information north of 145th Street is mostly from 1879, and was not all built as shown, while the rest is from mainly after 1900. --NE2 11:46, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Major interrruptions

Eh? Rock Center does not interrupt the grid plan; Times Square makes no major interruption, and Grand Central does. Or am I misunderstanding? Jim.henderson 03:33, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Significant issues

This article has significant issues and is poorly written. If anything it deserves a major rewrite. The following passages from just a brief overview of three sections are not backed up with citations, and include weseal words and puffery.

"In what would become the U.S., the gridiron dominates" "Carson city may have the smallest" "the powerful De Lancey family" "Unfortunately, the land" "The streets of Lower Manhattan were more "organic"" "relatively inexperienced"

and the absolute worst culprit that I came across

"And in the meantime, the Commissioners were, generally speaking, distracted by various other personal and political business; although they met – infrequently – there is no record of what they discussed, or if they were getting closer to a decision about what their plan would entail."

This might constitute original research too. Llammakey (talk) 11:20, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Everything is sourced. Everything. BMK (talk) 15:22, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Then cite it. Otherwise I assume its original research or your not attributing. This isn't a book, this isn't a research paper. Everything must be attributed to its source. Llammakey (talk) 15:59, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Accessibility fix per MOS reverted

I recently made a number of minor changes to this article, including adding a period at the end of a sentence (which is a style choice, I suppose) and converting bold headers into actual wikified headers per WP:PSEUDOHEAD. My edit was reverted. This is a basic accessibility issue. I am requesting that the reverting editor explain why a personal style choice trumps accessibility for subheadings in this article. Perhaps {{TOC limit}} could be used to achieve the desired effect? – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:18, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

There is no accessibility issue. The headings are simply bolded words, which can be read by any screen reader. There is no need for the subheads under "References" to be hierarchical, cluttering up the TOC. "TOC limit" would affect the entire article, which is undesireable. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:17, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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Citation style inconsistency

There are at least four citation styles in use in the article at present.

• Several source-specific citation templates are built using {{citation}}, which is Citation Style 2. These have had |mode= added as an option, so they can emulate CS1.
• One source-specific temple was built using {{cite book}}, and several other footnotes also use that and {{cite news}}. These are Citation Style 1, and could use |mode=cs2 to emulate CS2 if desired.
• Several footnotes are hand-crafted and use no templates. They render output that's not consistent with either CS1 or CS2. In many cases, a space is missing between "p." or "pp." and the page number(s), and some use "Accessed" where the templates use "Retrieved" before an access date, with a variety of punctuation.
• The various shortened citations are hand-crafted and don't consistently display the year of publication, with a variety of formats for displaying the page numbers.

I added the facility for the source-specific templates to emulate either CS1 or CS2. I care not which is used, but the two should not be mixed in the same article as in here without using the mode parameter as needed to put them all into the same style. Those templates can now also support |ref= which works with a variety of options for templated Harvard-style references to link between a shortened citation back to the full citation. {{Harvp}} supplies an output that's consistent with the rest, putting the author last names before the year in parentheses and the page number(s). Additionally, they can be used CMOS-style, with the first citation in full and a shortened cite for subsequent references. In any case, I'm moving on. Imzadi 1979 → 23:55, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Please read WP:CITEVAR. The citations are relatively consistent in their output, the way they read on the page, and that's what CITEVAR is talking about when it refers to "consistency", not about whether the reference uses a template or is "handrolled". How they got there is irrelevant, as long as they are easily accessible by the reader.

The form of reference you used was unclear and practically impossible for new editors of the page to follow. I certainly didn't understand it, and I write the vast majority of the article. (89.5% authorship) Referencing articles shouldn't require a degree in templatology.

Do not make any' article-wide changes in referencing style until you have a clear consensus from the editors of this page to do so. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:59, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

BTW, how much text have you added to this article? Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:01, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Imzadi1979, in principal I agree with you regarding keeping references consistent within an article. I think you could be going about it slightly more efficiently. Are you familiar with the {{rp}} template? This allows for appending page numbers at the end of references so that the same reference can be re-used multiple times without having to write a new one each time a different page is referenced. I recently made a change to the Cobble Hill, Brooklyn article implementing it. See here and this diff. If done smartly, it would reduce the total number of duplicate citations in this article greatly and allow them all to be grouped into their parent reference. Currently it is unclear to which reference "Augustyn & Cohen" or "Koeppel (2015)" is referring. Your version of the article helps this by adding an anchor link to the correct reference, but by using {{rp}} all these various references can be collapsed into just one for each citation. Each page is still cited directly, just in a way that makes it easier to keep track of the various repeated references. Would it help if I gave an example from this article? - Paul^T+/_C 03:08, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I went ahead and converted all the possible "Koeppel (2015)" references to use the {{rp}} template as an example. It led to a reduction of ~50 citations without any loss in clarity or precision with the references. If the remaining citations were done similarly it would be even more clear and consistent. Let me know what you think Imzadi1979 and Beyond My Ken, is this a good compromise? (Also note BMK, you are getting close to WP:3RR in this article.) - Paul^T+/_C 04:26, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I've reverted those changes. Read -- and understand -- CITEVAR. You cannot change the reference style as set simply due to your personal preference. Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:19, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

You are now at 3 reverts on this page, Beyond My Ken. Also, you are wrong about WP:CITEVAR. Apparently I'm not the one that needs to "understand" it. The relevant parts:::::The following are standard practice:

[...]

• imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles (e.g., some of the citations in footnotes and others as parenthetical references): an improvement because it makes the citations easier to understand and edit;
• fixing errors in citation coding, including incorrectly used template parameters, and <ref> markup problems: an improvement because it helps the citations to be parsed correctly;
• combining duplicate citations (see § Duplicate citations, above).

All three of those bullets apply to the change I made and parts of them apply to the change Imzadi1979 made. You cannot just wholesale revert a change to a page just because you don't like it. Furthermore you do not WP:OWN this or any other page in Wikipedia, regardless of how much you edit it. I'm reverting back my change. Please attempt to understand the benefits of the changes we are proposing. It will make it easier for readers to follow the references if they are in a consistent format across *all* references and citations in the article. - Paul^T+/_C 15:00, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

You have once again violated CITEVAR without good reason, and OVERLINK as well. Please do not change the reference style as it has been set by the primary author of the article, per WP:CITEVAR, which you still clearly do not undestand. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:48, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Error in "gotham" and "manhmaps" citations?

There are nine references to "Burrows and Wallace" ({{cite gotham}}). Seven refer to pages 419–422 (with ref name=gotham), one to page 187, and one to page 447. Are all seven references to pages 419–422 correct? I think there may be relevant page numbers missing when using ref name=gotham. Can whoever added those referneces please double check the relevant page numbers for those citations? Thanks, - Paul^T+/_C 15:30, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Similarly, there are 16 references to "Augustyn & Cohen" ({{cite manhmaps}}). All but two refer to pages 100–106 (with ref name=manhmaps). The other two refer to pages 106–109 and 110–111 respectively. I think it is important to have the specific page numbers for the reference, but are there really that many all from such a small slice of 7 pages in that book? I don't have the source in front of me so I can't double check myself, but I can see a situation where it is easier to simply cite ref name=manhmaps without giving a new page number. (And given the similar pattern with "gotham" above, I'd argue it is likely.) Can whoever added those references double check these page numbers as well? - Paul^T+/_C 15:38, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I added all those references, and they are all correct. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:53, 18

April 2018 (UTC)

Since you don't know the sources, what grounds do you have for saying there are errors? So you know the subject matter - you've never contributed to the article. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:55, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Dashes

The article contains many instances of em dashes and en dashes. Some are spaced, others not. But, according to the Manual of Style, articles should “use either unspaced em dashes or spaced en dashes, with consistency in any one article”. I’m looking for consensus before we conform the article. I’m slightly in favor of spaced en dashes because I see them more often on Wikipedia. Thoughts, please? —LLarson (said & done) 15:35, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

The MOS is an editing guideline. It is not policy, and is not mandatory. Stylistic choices are frequently left up to the editors of the article. Considering that I wrote 65% of the article by number of edits, and 83% by added text, and it is calculated that my "authorship" factor is 89.5%, [3] the choices that I made in writing the article are now precedent, and stand. Your edits changed the long-standing status quo of the article, and have been reverted. Please do no restore them unless you have a consensus from the editors on this page to do so.

I will also note that you appear to be following me around, having moved from a dispute on Template:Cite naming, which I wrote and am the primary user of, and Tenth Avenue (Manhattan) (most edits, most text added, 28.3% authorship) [4] to here. Please stop doing this before it became a matter that needs to be reported to admins on the noticeboards. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:33, 18 June 2018 (UTC)