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In Manhattan there are still alleys between the buildings? Every time I've been there I've never seen one. Maybe there is still some in the Bronx, but even there I do not remember having seen. They have now become a piece of history?
No. That wasn't the point. It was a conscious decision that goes all the way back to the 1811 plan (when they layed out the Manhattan street grid.)
Alleys as a city planning tool have advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that they give someplace to hide the nasty, unsightly, annoying stuff that buildings need to deal with (thing garbage, deliveries, etc.) The disadvantage is that they give someplace that out of sight for nastiness to hide (think various sorts of crime.) When the make the 1811 plan, for the latter reason, alleys weren't included. It's one of the reasons NYC may be dirtier than other cities, because the garbage has to be put on on the streets, not hidden in the alleys.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kefir King
Real estate is too expensive to allow for the luxury of many alleys. They exist but are rare compared with other cities.
No. That wasn't the point. It was a conscious decision that goes all the way back to the 1811 plan (when they layed out the Manhattan street grid.)
Alleys as a city planning tool have advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that they give someplace to hide the nasty, unsightly, annoying stuff that buildings need to deal with (thing garbage, deliveries, etc.) The disadvantage is that they give someplace that out of sight for nastiness to hide (think various sorts of crime.) When the make the 1811 plan, for the latter reason, alleys weren't included. It's one of the reasons NYC may be dirtier than other cities, because the garbage has to be put on on the streets, not hidden in the alleys.
Indeed.
Quote:
Sections of Manhattan laid out prior to 1811, including areas of lower Manhattan and Greenwich Village, today feature alleys as artifacts of a pre-planned city. The elite and influential New Yorkers charged in 1807 with establishing a comprehensive street plan for Manhattan viewed alleyways as dangerous to the health and well-being of the city and its inhabitants. Indeed, the plan they conceived appears to have been intended to discourage alleys in the city’s future development. John Randel Jr., who mapped the plan, wrote that the grid was created in part out of a concern for “avoiding the frequent error of laying out short, narrow, and crooked streets, with alleys and courts, endangering extensive conflagrations, confined air, and unclean streets…”
The excessive depth of the lots and lack of interior alleys inherent in the Commissioners' Plan had significant health and hygiene ramifications for the so-called "tenements," which would prove problematic throughout the nineteenth century century. Various building regulations, de facto and de jure, tried to compensate for the defects of the Manhattan grid, but it wasn't until the end of the century that advances in healthcare, building, and transit overcame the practical limitations of the ubiquitous 200-ft deep block.
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