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"Dripps I" -- First Edition of the First Map of Manhattan with Building-level Detail.

Monumental in scale and ambition, the Map of the City of New York Extending Northward to Fiftieth St. is the first printed map to depict, in detail, every lot and building in Manhattan. Published in 1851 by Matthew Dripps and surveyed by John F. Harrison, it captures the city at a critical moment of expansion, documenting its streets, businesses, and institutions with remarkable precision. At over seven feet in height, the map is an extraordinary achievement in urban cartography, presenting a wealth of information on the burgeoning city.

Building-Level Detail

The names of businesses, public institutions, and religious establishments provide insight into the city’s economic and social development. Near the New York Hospital on Church Street, a cluster of institutions—“(Colored) Pub Prim Sch No. 5,” “Colored Sch. No. 2,” “Colored Bapt. Ch.,” and “Afrn. M.E. Ch.”—shows the presence of New York’s free Black community and their efforts to establish educational and religious institutions.

Along the South Street docks, the map captures industries tied to maritime commerce, including “Tobacco Inspection No. 1 & 2,” “Sperm Oil Fcty.,” “Mast & Spar Yd.,” and “Oil & Candle Facty.” Ferries connect to Brooklyn. The “Bapt. Mariners Ch.” reflects the large seafaring population.

The Astor Place Opera House appears on the map two years after the Astor Place Riot of 1849, when class tensions and nationalist rivalries between supporters of British actor William Macready and American actor Edwin Forrest erupted in violence, leaving at least 22 dead.

The Colored Orphan Asylum (1836–1863) is marked, later burned down during the Draft Riots of 1863. The Croton Reservoir appears where the New York Public Library now stands, built to supply the city with clean drinking water. The Asylum for Friendless Boys is also noted.

Inset illustrations show important civic and cultural institutions, including New York University (upper left), the Distributing Reservoir, the Astor Free Library, the Society Library, the Merchants Exchange, the U.S. Custom House (lower right), the N.Y. Free Academy, City Hall, and Odd Fellows Hall.

The northern section of the map shows the planned city grid extending into undeveloped land. Harrison’s survey work records both the existing city and the framework for its continued expansion. Dripps, a prolific publisher of New York maps, produced some of the most detailed and commercially significant cartography of the period.

Commentary in Manhattan in Maps

Robert Augustyn and Paul Cohen write of the Dripps map (labeling it Dripps I):

One of the most speculative enterprises of the early nineteenth century was fire insurance. Devastating fires were prevalent throughout the century, and a large conflagration could easily bankrupt a number of insurance companies. In the early 1850s, a new kind of urban map began to be published in America: the real-estate map. It provided such detailed information important to insurance men as dimensions of blocks, configurations of buildings, and width of streets. In 1851, when New York City was becoming complex, Matthew Dripps published two influential maps that delineated the hectic building activities in the city and distilled a great deal of information useful to the city's businessmen.

"How this city marches northward!" wrote George Templeton Strong on October 27, 1850. "The progress of 1835 and 1836 [when the city was rebuilding from the Great Fire] was nothing to the luxurient, rank growth of this year. Streets are springing up, whole strata of sandstone have transferred themselves from their ancient resting-places to look down on bustling thoroughfares for long years to come. Wealth is rushing in upon us like a freshet." 

These were "the first printed maps of New York that show, in detail, all the individual lots and buildings." Dripps was an unlikely man to stand at the beginning of such an important phase of New York mapping. An immigrant grocer with no training in geography, he established his map publishing business one year after disembarking in America from Ireland. Dripps I, "Map of the City of New-York Extending Northward to Fiftieth St." was Dripp's first significant map. The large scale--the map is more than seven feet long--allowed him to realize the remarkable detail. All fo the city's important structures, parks, markets, and cemeteries are delineated and twenty vignettes of buildings decorate the border.