Notes
1 The map was produced by American engineer Egbert L. Viele with the title Sanitary & Topographical Map of the City and Island of New York. The Viele Map (as it came to be known) was one of a series of representations of the city grid that started with John Randel’s initial plan certified by the city’s street commissioners in 1811.
2 Steven Kurutz, “When There Was Water, Water Everywhere,” New York Times (June 11, 2006). Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/nyregion/thecity/11viel.html?_r=2&oref=slogin& (accessed January 12, 2016).
3 Charles A. Baskerville, “The Foundation Geology of New York City,” in Geology under Cities, ed. Robert F. Legget (Boulder: Geological Society of America, 1982), 110.
4 Eric W. Sanderson, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City (New York: Abrams, 2009). When describing the conditions of the old Mannahatta (the Lenni Lenape name for the island, meaning the land of many hills) before the establishment of the first colonies, Sanderson refers to a luxuriant and very diverse landscape, crossed by many streams that nourished fertile valleys, wetlands, and dense forests.