Haha, Murray Hill is full of trash.

Captain Denton - I really like your graphic approach to New York as a topographical entity, a cityscape - as a visual universe. From the night pictures to this -- it's a good way of dealing with the city.

Who knew that East Harlem was previously Skull Island?

Hey... wait... I can see my house from here!

oh mr. denton! you sure had me going there... "maps used to be prettier" - HA! GOOD ONE! april fools on me! that old map looks like a diseased lung, where as the new one is all straight lines and bright colors and so organized (mr. denton, you know how I love to organize! yes, sir, the junior interns and I have been working all day on straightening up the herbs & essential oils closet, and oh! how it sparkles! I think you'll be pleased. the cauldron will be back from the polishers tomorrow, and I'll begin working on the may day potions anon.)

At this rate, soon it's going to be too fat to live in itself.

@donmiguel: Thanks. It's a personal obsession. I collect images and maps of New York as it once was, might one day be, or-even better-as it might have been. (Though I always have to watch out in sharing them lest Gawker become too NYC-centric.)

@the supergoddess: The old map looks as skinny and sinewy as Madonna's arm, before Vanity Fair's Photoshop. (Oops, and I called it pretty.)

She may have been skinny, but she was bumpy and wrinkly. You really have to pick your poison can't have your bitches both ways, y'know?

@manhattan: fattie.

@Nick Denton: Or you could have Madonna. Mr. Denton's comment: preemptively disproving my poorly constructed theory.

@the supergoddess: None of that now!

@Richard: sorry! I couldn't resist! um? april fools?!

I think I've seen that thing on the right in a locker room on a strange old man.

People seeking an even more thorough portrait of New York City before the Europeans came along may be interested in The Mannahatta Project:

[www.wcs.org]
[www.newyorker.com]

The paved-over version is always prettier.

Now lets see a map of Idaho, and how it's changed since Ezra Pound left.

Battery Park City is built on landfill excavated from the site of the former (and present) World Trade Center. In a bit of slimming, rock shoals were blasted at Hell's Gate - the juncture of the Harlem and East Rivers and Long Island Sound - to make the dangerous channel even less so for ships. Marble Hill, the northernmost part of Manhattan, is actually on the mainland U.S. - ensconced in the warm embrace of The Bronx, because a meandering part of the Harlem River was re-routed for a straighter channel. And some of that bedrock excavated for the New York City subways went to build the man-made U Thant island, south of Roosevelt (formerly Welfare) Island in the East River.

I love this shit.

@Dickdogfood: That's simply awesome. I think we do a Gawker raid on their map room.

So, if Manhattan is bulimic, which borough gets to be its toilet?

/The Canadian drops her comment slowly and backs out of the room with hands in the air.

@Nick Denton: I'm sure you already know about the book Low Life, by Luc Sante. On the very small chance that you don't, it's an excellent time machine guide to New York - the one that used to be.

@Hez: Staten Island.

Manhattan used to look a lot less like a penis.

Well then it's a fact that the Meatpacking District isn't real, isn't it?!

@HiredGoons: Least populous borough, most parkland in NYC... nah.

@donmiguel: The Epic of New York City by Robb Edward Ellis is also excellent.

I suspected Manhattan had leprosy at one point.

All Subway (and other) maps of the city are seriously scaled wrong. Manhattan is still skinnier than Kate Moss.