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Comment by Steltek | Hacker News Reader

Manhattan burned to the ground so they got a do-over on their street grid. Any East Coast city that wasn't centrally planned (e.g. DC) or burned to the ground will resemble Boston.

Boston also more than tripled in size due to land reclamation, which included leveling some hills. The contours that the current roads follow may have made more sense when Boston Common was a muddy beach and everyone walked to where they were going.

https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1s92xa/cool_map_of_... https://imgur.com/gallery/0C349u9

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Got any more information about "Manhattan burned to the ground"? I can only find two "great fires" that may be relevant, and neither of them gave Manhattan a do-over.

The Commissioner's plan is the reason Manhattan has a grid system, and the page for it doesn't reference any fires.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811

Finally, the streets before the Commissioner's plan took effect are still rather small and twisty.

OP is wrong. The grid system was laid out before central/northern Manhattan was developed. No fire required. They may be confusing with London, Paris , Amsterdam, Atlanta, etc

Amsterdam is not regular because of fires. It's radial grid is the first urban planning ever done - Amsterdam drew the streets far out and people settled them over the next 100 years or so

Not sure about this. It’s more that the city grew from south to north and at a certain point they started using the grid plan. Lower Manhattan is pre-Grid and a lot like Boston with streets in all directions.

Manhattan is weird, it is like an early beta version of a grid system, where they had the right idea, but the implementation is just way off.

In the majority of cities laid out on a grid, you can give an address and a street number, and that is enough to navigate to your destination. Houses are numbered according to the cross street, so on 6th ave and 12th st, if my house faces out towards 6th ave, my house address would be 12xx.

For whatever reason Manhattan neglected that particular part of the grid system algorithm.

First time I visited Manhattan this threw me off. Navigation should be reasonable, but instead it is almost reasonable.

Perhaps you meant Atlanta was the one that burned to the ground and got a do-over?

Chicago burned, too. But it was already a grid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire

The later parts of Boston are grids, too. Back Bay (which was literally a bay, and that's part of why Fenway Park is sinking) is a slightly lumpy grid, and South Boston (a landfill-widened neck) is too.

Fenway is sinking? I googled that, and this joke article is all I could find: http://www.dugoutlegends.com/fenway-park-replaced/

Back Bay itself is landfill and it still shifts a little here and there. I was told during a tour once that parts of Fenway had sunk over time.

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