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Early-19th-Century Manuscript Copy of an Important 18th-Century Survey of the Meatpacking District and part of the West Village.
This finely rendered manuscript map is a 19th-century copy of an important 18th-century survey documenting the estate of Admiral Sir Peter Warren (1703–1752) in what is now the West Village and Meatpacking District of Manhattan. While the original survey was conducted in August 1773 by Gerard Bancker and recopied by his nephew Evert Bancker Jr. in 1788, the present example is executed on paper watermarked “J Whatman 1832,” firmly placing it in the early 1830s. The copyist, though unnamed, closely replicates the structure and content of Bancker’s earlier work, including the thirty-two numbered parcels comprising 266 acres “by strict measure,” with boundaries marked in pen and ink and accented with delicate watercolor washes.
The estate was among the most consequential colonial landholdings on Manhattan Island, assembled by Warren between 1731 and 1744 on land previously associated with the Native village of Sapokanikan and the Dutch hamlet of Noortwyck. It stretched from the original Hudson River shoreline inland to “Bowry Lane” (modern Broadway), and from the line of present-day Christopher Street north to around 14th Street and beyond. The survey includes the Warren family mansion (later known as the Van Nest house) near today’s Perry Street, set off in red with a formal garden, as well as roads, outbuildings, woodland, a schoolhouse, and evidence of the area's gentle topography before it was reshaped by urban development.
The map is a landmark document in the history of New York’s urban form. It captures the early road network that would dictate the enduring irregularity of the West Village street plan. “Bowry Lane” follows the course of modern Broadway; “Old Greenwich Lane” is the ancestor of Greenwich Avenue; and “Great Kill Road,” tracing a marshy stream, prefigures Gansevoort Street. “Skinner Road,” which would become Christopher Street, honors one of Warren’s daughters. These rural tracks shaped the later city, surviving into the nineteenth century even as the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 imposed its rectilinear grid to the north.
In 1787, the estate was divided among Warren’s three daughters (Charlotte (Countess of Abingdon), Anne (later Baroness Southampton), and Susannah Skinner) all of whom had married English aristocrats. Bancker’s survey preserves their names on the estate’s lanes: "Abbington" Road followed the line of present-day 21st Street; FitzRoy Road shadowed Eighth Avenue to the east; and Skinner Road, again, was the precursor to Christopher Street. Only Abingdon Square, at the junction of these former paths, survives today as a named monument to the family.
Stokes called the Warren estate “one of the most interesting on Manhattan Island,” and reproduced the 1773 version as Addenda Plate 5-b (vol. III, pp. 865-66) in his Iconography of Manhattan Island. He emphasized its value in reconstructing the pre-urban topography: the Minetta watershed, the Warren woods, the bluff overlooking the Hudson, and the important historical associations of the mansion, which hosted the colonial assembly during a smallpox epidemic and stood until its demolition in 1865.
The 1773 survey is also listed in Deák (Picturing America, no. 133), who noted its role in documenting the transformation of the Warren estate from a colonial manor into building lots as New York expanded northward after the Revolution. This map was almost certainly used by the Warren heirs in managing postwar sales.
Today, Bancker’s survey provides a key to understanding why the West Village remains the most topographically and historically distinct part of Lower Manhattan. Its enduring street layout, lot geometry, and naming conventions all descend from the rural landscape recorded here, making this one of the most consequential estate maps in the city’s cartographic history.
Deák, Picturing America, no. 133
New York Public Library, I.N. Phelps Stokes Collection
Evert Bancker Jr. (1734–1815) was a New York City surveyor, merchant, and loyalist, who played a significant role in documenting the evolving landscape of New York.
Born into a wealthy merchant family, Bancker was closely involved with the land surveys, plats, and maps that captured the intricate layout of New York City’s streets, buildings, farms, and riverbanks. Alongside his brother Gerard Bancker, who served as New York’s first state treasurer, Evert worked for both private landowners and in an official capacity as New York City Surveyor, contributing to numerous land projects commissioned by individuals, churches, and the Corporation of the City of New York.
The Bancker brothers’ work spanned several decades, with the bulk of their surveys being produced between 1770 and 1810. These surveys not only charted the development of New York City but also extended into upstate New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. The collection of their work, which includes detailed depictions of properties and boundaries, remains an essential resource for understanding the transformation of New York’s urban landscape in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Bancker’s career as a merchant intersected with his surveying work, particularly in the areas of land conveyance and estate settlements. His loyalist sympathies during the American Revolution added complexity to his legacy, positioning him within the broader political dynamics of his time. He and his brother collaborated with other notable surveyors, such as Francis Maerschalk, to produce a body of work that has enduring historical significance, providing invaluable insights into the geography and development of early American cities.
The New York Public Library holds a large archive of Bancker Plans from 1667 to 1821 (mostly between 1770 and 1810).
