Got History?

Hawthorne & 50th (1936)

Aerial View of Portland (1936)

My fascination with history and place is no secret.  While i am intrigued with urban history in many forms, there's always a desire for a connection with the place you inhabit.  Typically this fascination comes via maps, which have been well documented, but the timeline of the past 150 years plus of Portland is worth a bit of investment.   For folks on the go, there's also an app that highlights historical site - prepared by the Architectural Heritage Center.  Also a new site, WhatWasThere, is a crowd-sourced version that allows folks to upload history photos of their places.

In addition, there are a number of other sources that augmented by a number of great resources that are provided by city and other historical society archives.  Each has some overlap but occupies a unique and often personal niche for the blogger and site owner - to scratch their particular history itch, and all make for some great information.

A veritable decoupage of historical imagery awaits at Portland History - a no-frills site that organizes images, postcards, and a few words - sorted into categories like streets, amusement parks,  A good shortcut is to go the site map, which gives some links to the categories - but just randomly moving around the site isn't a bad idea either.

Council Crest, the Dreamland of Portland, Oregon

Lost Oregon is a great example of an engaging history tour, albeit typically focused on architecture and riddled with some really bad theme ideas like this one.  The site is simple and delves into some more details about some of the areas, buildings, and locations - which augments what is somewhat visually based on other sites.

A spinoff of Lost Oregon writer is PDX: Then/Now which juxtaposes historic and current photos of buildings and places.  Some show destruction or evolution, and some, such as the Union Bank Building in Downtown, are eerily similar over 40 years later.

Vintage Portland is another site 'exploring portland's past', through "...photographs, postcards, illustrations, advertisements, etc. ... It’s not a history lesson, it’s not an architectural critique. It’s a forum for displaying photos of the city’s past, to show how we lived, what we’ve lost (for good or bad) through progress and just to enjoy some wonderful camera work."

I particularly appreciate the 'mystery' posts - which show a building, corner, streetscape - with a question to help find where the site is.  Sometimes it's to fill in a missing link to an archival photo, but other times it becomes more of a game.  The context over time is fascinating evolution - and really highlights the impermanence/permanence of the urban realm.  This shot of MLK @ Ainsworth from the north - replace Texaco with Starbucks (old fuel/new fuel?) and Gilmore with Popeyes (old grease/new grease?).

Cafe Unknown is a new one for me, but author Dan Haneckow pulls you in with compelling history (more text than other sites) along with some good images.  A recent post on Mark Twain in Portland is a good read, and some of the trivial pursuits are great - like Will- vs. Wall- for our fair river (which subsequently ended up 'Willamette') are nuggets of pure gold.  Haneckow is a true historical writer - with the requisite head shots of historical figures quoted... along with some really solid writing and research.  These walking tour images were pretty interesting finds - along with the story of a missing sculpture found.  This stuff is priceless - and firmly about our place.

Check all of these resources out - It is true - you will be sucked in for a few hours/days/weeks - and might come out forever changed.   I feel like a landscape or at least urbanism oriented history site wouldn't be a bad endeavor - if someone is inclined to collaborate - look me up.  But the caveat on these sites, and historical maps, photos, and primary materials - it's addictive.  Don't say i didn't warn you.

Cartographic Rectification

A recent post at the Fresh Kills Park Blog showed the beauty and function of the process of map rectification in GIS, where a map and image can be combined by matching ground control points in the mapping system to points in the image. As it may be well known, I'm constantly fascinated by historic maps as a tool for understanding and creating modern moves in cities, and recently I expressed a desire to do this with a series of Portland maps.


:: image via Fresh Kills Park Blog

These maps aren't 100% accurate, as they rely on consistent base points to align common map features, and often lack in accuracy - but do provide a great overview of layers of history. An indication of the product is shown on the FKP site - a rectified map of the landfill site (above): "A 1907 map of the Fresh Kills area helped us understand a little more clearly the extent of filling in creeks and wetlands, and also the sense of private ownership that this land did, in fact, enjoy prior to the start of landfill operations–the entire site was entirely carved up into privately owned parcels."

In this case, it isn't a particularly unattainable venture, thanks to the New York Public Library beta version of their map rectifying tool (aka Warper) online: "...that allows users to digitally align or “rectify” historical maps from the NYPL collection with today’s maps and aerial photos. You can browse previously rectified maps or sign-up for an account to align your own and add it to the browse-able archive"

Check out a short video of the tool:


These processes bring to mind of course the wonderful Mannahatta Project by Eric Sanderson, which used rectified historical maps to provide a . I just finished devouring the book, so look for a post soon.

Ghost Highway: Mount Hood Freeway

It's fascinating to dig into some of the historical legacies that have existed throughout planning over time. Some seem like missed opportunities - while others show that perhaps sometimes cooler heads will prevail, and we think of the awfulness of what might have been. Nowhere in Portland's planning history is this more evident than the thankfully unbuilt Mount Hood Freeway, which would have literally chopped to bits the inner east side in the mid 1960s with a network of high capacity roadways.



It's also interesting to see the genesis of this idea, from none other than the infamous Robert Moses. From the Permatopia site on Dead Highways: "This map from the Portland Planning Division's 1966 development plan illustrates Robert Moses' vision for a city girdled by freeways. Red indicates existing freeways; green indicates freeways that were never built."


:: image via Willamette Week

From some older coverage on the WW site: "The story of the freeway's demise is a tale of urban America after World War II and a lesson in what distinguishes Portland from other West Coast cities. It gave us strong neighborhoods, proud schools and MAX. It cemented the region's commitment to ecology and the reputation of a brilliant political leader. The murder not only saved 1,750 households in Southeast Portland from the wrecking ball, it also established Portland's philosophy of urban livability-the idea that cities are for people, not just for commerce and cars."

It may be difficult to comprehend, but the slice of the Mount Hood Freeway would have edge along was is currently Clinton Street, one of the hip neighborhood commercial pocket in southeast. An portion of a map shows the dashed line slicing down this street.


:: image via Permatopia

And a view down current Clinton Street @ 26th:


:: image via Portlandize

Taking a cue from the planning wisdom at the time, Moses planned Portland for auto-dominated greatness. From the Portland Mercury:

"Sixty-six Septembers ago, a Portland city commissioner invited the powerful (and, these days, infamous) transportation planner Robert Moses to come to Rose City and write its road construction plan. Moses, a freeway mogul whose most lasting legacy is the massive byways slicing apart New York's boroughs, brought a team of men and holed up for two months in a downtown hotel. After exploring the city and crunching numbers, the men whipped up an 86-page blueprint for Portland's future.

It was in this plan that Portland was first divided by the inky lines that would eventually become I-205, I-84, I-5, I-405, and Highway 26. It was Moses' men who first drew the Fremont Bridge onto a photo of Portland. In white ink, they imagined the freeway to be a suspension bridge running across the river and down into the current Overlook neighborhood. But they also imagined a lot more.

To modernize and meet the demands of a growing economy and expanding population, back in 1943 Moses argued that Portland must surround itself with freeways—an inner ring carrying traffic through the city with another freeway ring encircling its outer limits."

The other part of the legacy that is visible is the dead end off- and on-ramps that show up along many of the stems of this future highway system... a reminder of what might have been.


:: image via Portland Mercury

More of this legacy: "People can drive past on Division or Clinton streets every day and never know it’s there. Indeed, it wouldn’t be there at all, if supporters of the Mount Hood Freeway had had their way. The diminutive Piccolo Park (Southeast 28th Avenue between Division and Clinton streets, 503-823-7529) cuts a grassy swath through a residential block. The land was acquired by the state in the 1970s for a freeway, which would have roared through this historic neighborhood, but the freeway planning faltered and in 1989 the parcel was turned into a charming city park."

If the benefits aren't obvious, a video from Streetfilms highlights the result, in a study on the neighborhood left behind, versus that which was destroyed through freeway expansions. "Clarence Eckerson Jr., takes us to Portland to see the results and posits that his own neighborhood in Brooklyn might have benefited from similar forethought during the planning phase of the Robert Moses-designed Brooklyn-Queens Expressway."

Historic Portland Maps: 1852 Cadastral Maps

Probably the most detailed and broad ranging of these early maps are from the collection from the Public Land Survey System (or Cadastral Maps). These were generated throughout the 1850s in the Portland metro region, with the main portion of Portland encompassed in two maps, which were obviously the base material for the 1852 Survey Map, as it contains much of the same data.





Zooming in a bit on the area of current downtown Portland, we see the nascent grid forming along 'The Clearing', and see the edge of the Tualatin Mountains (West Hills) to the west, even a trail leading toward Beaverton through a slot in the Canyon where Highway 26 west (Sunset Highway) runs. On the east side of the river is the lowland marsh and streams that were subsequently filled to create the Central Eastside Industrial area. Within the Willamette River to the south, Ross Island is intact, well before the constant sand and gravel mining operations left it a ribbon of it's former self.



The detail is pretty awesome, as you really get a feel for some of the drainages that existed, still in visible dendritic forms making sub-watersheds. This section also shows the routing of a 'road' that connected to Milwaukie and Tualatin to the south.



The northern section captures the upper reaches of Downtown, as well as the current Pearl district and Northwest Industrial Zone. Closer to downtown, the original routing of Tanner Creek is made evident by it's headwaters at the 'Tannery' adjacent to the road to the Tualatin Plains. This fed Couch Lake, a wetland adjacent to the Willamette that is currently the location of Tanner Springs Park, a metaphorical daylighting of this lowland. Finally, in the pre-bridge era, the location of ferry crossings connecting east and west are shown



Another notable items on the upper west includes Guilds Lake, a significant water body that was the site of the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted - which was later filled to create flat industrial land as it exists today.


:: image via Portland History

Taking a closer look at the northernmost section you see the level of detail shown in the marshy edge of the Columbia River called on the map 'Columbia Bayou' and some of the earliest low-density riverfront inhabitation.



I really love this map for many reasons, but the fact that it is referenced to the township, section, range mapping convention, making it easy to use as an underlayment for modern mapping to show a pre-development (or at least early development snapshot of Portland context). It also shows a relatively wide span of the region, making it useful beyond the boundaries of Portland.

I have created a few of these maps over the years which I will post when I get a chance). My ultimate goal is to reconcile these into a graphical layer in GIS that can be used for mapping analyses... any grad students out there want a project? (Find many of these maps from this post and the previous ones at the great City of Portland Publications and Maps Page)

Historic Portland Maps: 1845-1852

The discussions of Portland Urban Form (here, here) got me thinking about a series of posts I originally posted to Free Association Design of a collection of historic Portland maps that I thought worthy of reposting here. It's great to see the origins of the urban form begin to take shape, and it provides a context in which to see what happened over a century and a half previous and it's current ramifications. Starting off, this is one of the oldest maps I’ve been able to find 'The Clearing' shows the core of Portland in the early years. The large parcels on the right are owned by Francis Pettygrove and Benjamin Stark, both prominent place-names of early history. This is the first iteration, including the afforementioned 200' square blocks, which were laid out by the business-oriented duo to maximize valuable corner lots.



This map dates to the inital history of Portland – with the initial land claim by William Overton and Asa Lovejoy, and the subsequent ‘coin-toss’ by Lovejoy and Pettygrove, giving the City is current name. From City of Portland’s Historic Portland Timelines, 1843-1901:

“1945: Overton sells his share of the claim to Francis Pettygrove. Pettygrove and Lovejoy survey the land, deciding to build a city. Previously called The Clearing, Portland gets its name with the toss of a coin with Pettygrove’s home town in Maine winning over Lovejoy’s birthplace in Boston.”

While I'm much happier with the western iteration of Portland versus Boston, it's a interesting factoid to see that coin flips original history, but more telling that the City evolved from the man-made Clearing along the riverside. Tying a bit of this history to the mapping, this early settlement map shows the Lownsdale claim. Again from the City of Portland Historic Timeline 1843 to 1901:

“1850: Portland or “Stump Town”, consists of a steam sawmill, a log-cabin hotel and the weekly Oregonian. Sidewalks are rough planks and the streets are dirt turning to mud when it rains. Houses are small and simple, only 2 houses in town have a plaster interior.”

The map below shows the level of development – tied closely to the larger 1852 Portland map in amount of urbanization. You can also see on the right side where the grid shift will take place (along present day Burnside) as the blocks blend into Capt. Couch’s claim.



The inset of the western section shows the sparse development – including pastureland, orchards, and gardens. There was also some smaller gardens and potato fields along the creek (which is probably Tanner) to the NW.



The City of Portland was subsequently incorporated in on February 8th, 1851, using the established Lownsdale plan as a starting point. The inset shows the ‘developed’ downtown – expanded somewhat from the 1945 map of ‘The Clearing’. To the north was land claimed by Captain John Couch – and to the south was land claimed by James Terwilliger – place names that continue to define NW and SW areas to this day. The road shown on this map led to the Tualatin Plains, running along present-day Canyon Road, which at the time was a plank trail built in 1847 – heading towards present-day Beaverton.



To connect the maps to the level of development, an ’urban’ shot showing the City, circa 1852 – taken from the corner of First & Stark (photo via PDX History)

Where the Revolution Began

The passing of Lawrence Halprin has close ties to an upcoming book that is being released this weekend celebrating his legacy in Portland. This Saturday is a chance to celebrate the legacy of Halprin in Portland, with the release of 'Where the Revolution Began: Lawrence and Anna Halprin and the Reinvention of Public Space'.



On Saturday, December 5th, at 2pm, join us for the release of a book celebrating the world-renowned Portland fountain plazas designed by Lawrence Halprin. The event will be located at the Ziba World Headquarters Auditorium (map) at 1044 9th Ave NW. A quick rundown of events:

Introduction by: Portland Parks Commissioner Nick Fish

Lecture performance by: Ron Blessinger, violinist, Third Angle Ensemble, with dancer/choreographers Linda K. Johnson, Tere Mathern, Cydney Wilkes, and Linda Austin.

Screening of: The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin. A documentary about the September 2008 performance in Halprin’s Portland plazas.

::

About the Book:
Some additional information about the book, from a press release issued by the Halprin Landscape Conservancy:

"Between 1963 and 1970, Lawrence Halprin and Associates realized the Portland Open Space Sequence: a quartet of public plazas in Portland, Oregon, that redefined the city and set a bold new precedent for urban landscape architecture. Comprised of Lovejoy Fountain, Pettygrove Park, and Ira Keller Fountain), plus the lesser-known Source Fountain, the plazas are a collage of striking concrete forms, gushing water, and alpine flora that, in their seamless mix of nature and theater, created a playful metaphorical watershed coursing through the central city."


:: image via Halprin Landscape Conservancy

"Where the Revolution Began (Spacemaker Press, $29.95) is the story of how these plazas came to be. Born of the creative experimentation and collaboration between the late Halprin and his wife, pioneering choreographer/dancer Anna Halprin, the Portland Open Space Sequence came to life in the unlikely setting of the Portland’s first scrape-and-rebuild urban renewal project. But Halprin defied the conventions of both American urban renewal and midcentury modernism, designing the kind of inviting, exuberant public space not seen since Renaissance Rome’s Trevi Fountain and Piazza Navona.

The book is an outgrowth of “The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin,” a performance that took place in the plazas in September 2008 as part of PICA’s annual TBA Festival. The book’s release, the performance, and screening is a celebration of Halprin, who passed away October 25 at age 94.

For Lawrence Halprin, one of the 20th century’s most influential landscape architects, the Portland plazas were the first step in a career-long exploration of sequential works of landscape design, from the Haas Promenade in Jerusalem to the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C. For Portland, Halprin’s work marked the beginning of a tradition of remaking the city around interactive public spaces, such as the famed Pioneer Courthouse Square. And for landscape architecture, the plazas laid the earliest foundations for the ecologically and socially responsive urbanism on the rise today.

Replete with historic photographs and Halprin’s notebook drawings, Where the Revolution Began is a historically complete document of how this pivotal moment in urban landscape history came to be, from concept to fruition.

All proceeds from sales benefit the Halprin Landscape Conservancy, a nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public and preserving the Portland Open Space Sequence."

Essays by:
John Beardsley is the director of garden and landscape studies at Dumbarton Oaks and is the author of Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape and Gardens of Revelation: Environments by Visionary Artists.

Janice Ross is a professor in the Drama Department and director of the Dance Division at Stanford University. She is the author of Anna Halprin: Experience as Dance and Moving Lessons: The Beginning of Dance in American Education.

Randy Gragg is editor in chief of Portland Monthly magazine and has written on art and architecture for Architectural Record, Metropolis, Preservation, the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and numerous other publications.

Contemporary photography by:
Susan Seubert regularly photographs for National Geographic Traveler, Geo Saison, and the New York Times, among other publications. She was a 1999 recipient of Life magazine’s Alfred Eisenstaedt Award.

Funding generously provided by:
Oregon Arts Commission/National Endowment for the Arts
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
Portland Development Commission
Portland Parks & Recreation
Schnitzer Care Foundation
Russell Development Company
And many others.

Illustrating the Urban Condition

From a representational point-of-view, it is interesting to see some of the ways in which representation plays a vital role in communication. I'll inevitably revisit this some more, as it's a topic worth exploring, but these examples span the photographic to the planimetric, while encapsulating a wide range of messages. To begin, it's always interesting to see the popularity of documenting the urban conditions ala Alex Maclean - through semi-oblique aerial photography. His work stands on it's own, as well as illustrating some great books like 'Drosscape' and 'Reclaiming the American West' and the idea of this form shows up often as a method for exploration of the territory between eye level and satellite aerial...

:: Honolulu Area - photography by Alex Maclean - image via anArchitecture

This method is become more popular - with a plane rental and some good camera work being the necessary ingredients... often more informational than artistic - this method offers an additional view of the world that provides something lacking in the true plan-representational aerial that is useful in planning. This is found in many sources, including amongst others, the views of the LA River in The Infrastructural City, as well as another great urban typology - that of 'A Vocabulary of Sprawl' from The Infrastructurist.


:: Ground Cover - image via The Infrastructurist

:: The Alligator - image via The Infrastructurist

The traditional aerial photograph is still a great tool for many uses - either as a base map or a deeper analysis of land use. The accessibility of google earth and other high-resolution, easy to navigate sources is still used daily in our practice - and a hell of a lot easier than going to get blueprints of the mylars down at the city offices... A great example from Emergent Urbanism shows the figure-ground and 'wasted' space in our American gridded cartesian landscape: "Notice how much negative space is created by the imposition of the grid on a chaotic reality. The simplicity of the cartesian plan is deceptive. It generates complications as the random process of change unfolds."

:: image via Emergent Urbanism

The ability to utilize a temporal series of traditional aerial photographs, such as this view of Las Vegas over the past 25 years (via Archidose)... offers another added value of the urban form and growth (or sprawl in this case)... ""These images of the western portion of the Las Vegas metropolitan area show the city’s steady spread into the adjacent desert landscape. Undeveloped land appears along the left edges of the top two images. Here, the land on the city’s outskirts appears in shades of beige and tan, with just a hint of the street grid to come. By 1989, however, development filled the upper left corner—a residential area, complete with curving roads and semicircle streets. In subsequent images, development spreads southward, and by 2004, the entire image shows cityscape, including Interstate 215 passing through southwestern portion of the city."

:: image via Archidose

The plan offers a somewhat quantifiable planning tool, as seen in the installation 49 Cities by Work AC - which delves into the 'future' of some of the most vivid and unrealized utopian proposals from over the years, such as Corbu's Villa Radieuse and Koolhaas' Exodus Plan for London (seen below): Via Arch Daily: "49 Cities sets out to crunch the numbers of several centuries of unrealized urbanism, all the way from the Roman city to the great utopian projects of the 20th century. Through plans, sections, diagrams, charts and scale drawings, 49 cities are observed statistically and presented in an unprecedented comparative study, the result of a research project conducted over several years. Despite the fact that they never actually existed, this history of utopian urbanism provides a remarkable insight into our understanding of the contemporary metropolis."

:: image via Arch Daily

The illustrative quality is definitely captured in the sketchy planning maps - reminiscent of the on-the-fly analysis of Kevin Lynch and his Image of the City - outlining landmarks, nodes, paths, edges, and so on. These maps by Guy Debord, seen via Vulgare, show a number of interesting ideas of analysis for Paris...

:: images via Vulgare

A similar investigation spotted on the Portland Architecture blog reminded me of how evocative a selective display of information can be. In this case, a diagram showing a selected dataset, including major roadways, nodes, and parks - with the interstitial spaces being left blank as sort of an ambiguous filler... it's very much a representation of the fabric of Portland, neatly captured in a simple diagram.

:: image via Portland Architecture

To the other extreme, there is the visually dense drawings of one of my favorites, Lebbeus Woods or in this case, a reference to Paul Rudolph's illustrative technique, via urbanism.org: "Despite a number of monographs, including the mammoth Paul Rudolph: Architectural Drawings with its terrifyingly detailed, Piranesi-esque images, Paul Rudolph’s architecture is not easy to fully comprehend. Paradoxically, it could be argued that precisely because of the unsparingly detailed drawings of complex plans and sections, the tendency is to be overwhelmed rather than enlightened. Rudolph’s architecture is as densely “architectural” as it comes."

:: image via urbanism.org

The interesting thing is there isn't any 'right' way of communicating data and ideas, but there are many rules that offer some much needed guidance for legibility, orientation, and scale. Always a cartophile, a recent link via cityofsound to a fabulous blog called Making Maps: DIY Cartography, offered some wisdom of one of my favorites, Edward Tufte, towards the making of maps in this 2007 post entitled 'How Useful is Tufte for Making Maps?'. Read it all, then read/absorb Tufte, it's wonderful.

Map Regression

A great and informative post on some garden history from none other than gardenhistorygirl explores the idea of map regressions, in particular the Mikhailovsky Garden in St. Petersburg. This time-based approach captures moments of design through particular eras, showing how public space and garden design is influenced (although sometimes with a bit of a lag) by the stylistic whims of the time and place.

1716-17

1750

1820

1822
:: images via gardenhistorygirl

The interesting concept, and one we grapple with in historic preservation and it's many hot-button issues - is the concept of 'what (or rather whom) offer the most appropriate history to choose'. arcady elaborates on one approach: "It is a serious question in historic landscapes, which have multiple layers of time and meaning. Often, the most recent style is the easiest one to which to return. Traveling further back in time could require the removal of the top layers--layers that might include mature trees, or extant landscape features like ponds to which contemporary visitors have become attached. ... Rarely, though, a connection to some serious historic event, or the need to provide the proper setting for a significant piece of architecture, make the return to a more distant time an appropriate choice."

In the case of the Mikhailovsky Garden this was the 1820s naturalistic garden which erased most of the formality of the garden. This was restored to that form in a 2001 restoration effort. One wonders is the appropriate era of historical record is based on merit, lobbying, or ease of restoration...?


:: images via gardenhistorygirl

We can (and should) apply the same techniques and lens towards urban form as easily as landscapes (or maybe easier due to more complete documentation... and learn as well, with most histories, it is the interpretation that wins in the end. This is not idle chatter, but a future post on the very loud historical lobby in Portland is summarily being allowed to interpret history at the expense of good sense... more to come.

Past Forward: Mannahatta

I may have mentioned my love of historic urban maps. If not, then I will plead guilty here, and offer up Strange Maps as a vital modern contribution to our historical heritage, and let slip fact that I've read most of the written works of Mark Monmonier. As objects, maps are fascinating artifacts. Even more interesting is using these remnants of history to attempt to visualize and recreate a baseline, whether that be social, ecological, or other. A small past project started to delve into this in Portland - looking at maps of historical and 'disappeared' streams to evokes some of the cities hidden hydrology. I'm currently evolving this idea in an essay, so look forward to more on this in the future.

The work of Dr. Eric Sanderson and the Mannahatta Project takes this concept to a whole new level. The introduction to this project for me came while reading 'The World Without Us' towards the end of 2007. My reactions to the schizophrenic nature of the book notwithstanding, I was totally drawn into the chapter on Mannahatta, in method and vision. Today, Treehugger profiled this project, featuring a talk by Sanderson and a range of visuals to provide a vision for what is now New York City - of over 400 years ago. The study begins with analysis of historical maps:


:: 1782 British Headquarters Map Detail - image via the New Yorker


:: 1819 Farm Maps - image via the New Yorker

Mannahatta, which is derived from the indigenous Lenni Lenape tribal name for the land, seemed historically to burst with diversity. As Treehugger mentions in the lecture, Sanderson equated the beauty of Mannahatta as equal or greater than that of Yellowstone or Yosemite, and that it: "...was more biologically diverse than either of those two areas, and with its hardwood forests, freshwater, and estuarine environments, Mannahatta’s 54 different ecological communities (that is, interacting species living in the same place, bound together by a network of influences) and lush greenery would have dazzled any nature lover."


:: Mannahatta, circa 1609 (with current landform outline) - image via the New Yorker



:: Collect Pond (now Foley Square) - image via the New Yorker

Another resource is an audio interview with Sanderson on the Wildlife Conservation Society site, as well as some fact sheets and link to a fascinating paper authored by Sanderson and Marianne Brown entitled 'Mannahatta: An Ecological First Look at the Manhattan Landscape Prior to Henry Hudson'.


:: Lower Manhattan - image via the New Yorker

Sanderson took the early mapping, along with a computer program named 'Muir webs' to piece together the hidden puzzle of the geology, topography, hydrology and ecology of early 1600's Manhattan. Quoted via Treehugger:

"Sanderson is using his program to map what would have existed on each city block in Mannahatta 400 years ago. The program works through a process of matching animals to their habitats and vice-versa. By knowing that a certain animal species existed in an area of Manhattan and knowing what that animal ate, Sanderson can predict through the Muir webs program what plants or soils would have been there as well, or conversely can use knowledge of plants and soils to discover what animals would have found a habitat in any specific area."

One issue with the visuals is a lack of immediate context - kind of a vagueness of 'nature shot's without seeing the 'before and after' shots of landscape and city together. Plans are in the works to provide the ability to juxtapose old and new maps, and the entire endeavor will be well documented in time for the 400 year anniversary of Hudson's voyage to the area in 2009. Here's an example of this:


:: Mannahatta + Manhattan (Times Square then and now) - image via the New Yorker

As I mentioned, it's interesting to see the major changes in our urbanism - as well as to see the fact that the inherent nature of place is difficult if not impossible to erase. Coming full circle, back to a bit later date in history - is the map that I first encountered - the Survey Map of 1852 shows an early pioneer Portland in it's fledgling, even pre-Stumptown days. Focussing on waterways and topography, it's interesting to see what was hidden, yet how much still remains of this hydrology.


:: Survey Map of Portland (1852) - image via Portland BES


:: Detail of the Survey Map of Portland showing downtown - image via Portland BES

From a pure restoration point-of-view - there's little hope in recreated Mannahatta (or even less dense more verdant Pioneer Portland for that matter). Our challenge is to learn from these studies - what was there, what was the predevelopment baseline for water, habitat, and tree cover, then aim to recreate these functions. This can be physically (through selected ecological restoration), functionally (through green roofs, nature parks, habitat gardens, streettree canopy, green streets), and metaphorically (through art, interpretation, poetry and beauty).

This is our way of taking the past, learning from it, and moving forward a little more wise than when we began.