Like half the dudes are named Cornelius

Love seeing these maps. So weird to imagine NYC as anything except a mega city

This may have been the only time I could afford a downtown apartment

Wouldn't you want the blacksmith to live inside the walled area?

If I’m reading this right… I work on the former site of Martin Crigier’s Tavern.

Love that it actually gives the owners names

It might have been an old time version of industrial zoning. Smiths produce lots of noise, smoke, and are a fire hazard. Or maybe it was to attract customers coming to the city by horse or cart who needed a horseshoe or a wheel fixed.

The great six bouweries/Bouwerie lane 😂

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Bouwerie being (now) antiquated Dutch for farm.

Bowery street comes from the road that led to Peter Stuyvesant’s farm.

Just the tip…

The bog is where canal runs. ??

I love this kind of stuff.

About 120 years later and inflation from the 1700s is really hard to meaningfully measure but there's a document from the US's first secretary of war where he averaged out his living expenses in New York City in 1785-87.

He spent 215 pounds a year on rent, in today's dollars it's almost exactly 5 grand a month(assuming Knox was denoting things in British pounds sterling, otherwise it's less if he was using New York Pounds, currency in the colonial and early republic period gets weird). On that he rented a house for himself, his brother, his wife, 5 children, two hired servants, one unpaid girl, and two indentured boy servants. The house rent included a stables for two horses. They spent less on the rent than they did on food, which was about 280 2023 dollars a day. They spent just about half of what they paid in rent for the year on wine.

Here's the link.

Edit: If he's using NY Pounds, divide everything by 3 when using an inflation calculator but again inflation doesn't really tell the whole story.

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Me looking for Zabars.

So NYC has always been expensive I see 😂

Tanning vats by the swamp make for sweet, long summers.

Makes sense. A regular person might’ve been able to afford a parcel of land. But almost no one here has the knowledge or skills to clear that land, lay a foundation, and build a house.

If you ask me, it’s Corney.

If only Dirck Storm could see it now

I don’t think a lot of people were traveling by horse or cart. North of the Wall Street wall was untamed land with little road infrastructure controlled by various native tribes and confederations.

If you were traveling to the closest colony at the time (either Massachusetts Bay or New Haven), you’d almost certainly do it by ship.

Has a Westeros vibe

Better than the former site of my job. Mine's in the "Primitive Forest" Lol

Why is someone in 1785 still using British pounds? Shouldn't it be dollars past 1776?

I love how it’s so small that everyone is getting labeled by name, even in shared housing buildings. Imagine trying to do something like that now lol.

US Dollars were not the established principle currency until 1792. Before and for decades after people would use standard or localized British units (so a Pennsylvania pound was different from a Massachusetts pound, each different from the British pound sterling) equivalent to whatever they had on hand (like Spanish bullion for example).

Like even in the 1820s, John Quincy Adams reported that the dime was “utterly unknown,” whereas a Spanish reale would be accepted as a shilling in New York, nine pence in Boston and eleven pennies in Philadelphia, all based on the “absurd” application of English denominations to Spanish coins.

Tbh I'm not quite sure what coinage or paper money Knox was actually being paid in. Certainly not continental dollars as that money collapsed and was replaced with usd at at a 1000:1 conversion in 1792.

New York was using a localized Pound that had mixed sterling and devalued paper money but he probably was not using that localized rate when writing down expenses (everything would be worth 1/3 as much which doesn't quite make sense to me).

He would have been used to using pounds, shillings etc and that's probably why he wrote the list like that but whether the physical money he was paid in and used was pound sterlings or local NY pounds or some other coin like Spanish reales, not sure.

I mean he was renting a very large house and inflation doesn't mean a 1:1 correspondence when real prices of goods got cheaper with mass production and there's other economic phenomena going on.

Heere at the wall

It's not quite accurate. The population was over 2500 at the time, they've just marked large important estates and buildings.

That makes a lot more sense, thanks.

It's Broad Street.

Anyone know where De Waal Straat or the wall would be now? Can't tell if this is like Canal St. or much further uptown

Oh God it's just Wall street huh 🤦

Remember that a lot of the current island is landfill.