Estate / Collection: Collection of a New York Surveyor

[MAP - NEW YORK CITY]

SMITH, EDWIN; after UZAL W. FREEMAN. Map of Gramercy Seat Farm Belonging to the Heirs of James Duane. "Surveyed and made April 3rd, 1816 by Uzal W. Freeman, City Surveyor; New York, Oct 26th, 1826, a true copy made from the original by Edwin Smith." Manuscript survey map in ink, hand-colored, linen-backed, with a green cloth border. Light toning, uneven dust soiling, wear to edges with some small losses to paper and to the cloth border, some creases and tears mostly at edges, manuscript annotations in pencil and ink.

An attractive manuscript survey of founding father and early New York City mayor James Duane's Gramercy Seat Farm, mapping how the property was divided among his five heirs. The farm stretched from Bloomingdale Road, now Broadway, to just east of Third Avenue, and from Twentieth Street to Twenty-third Street. Duane (1733-1797) had acquired the land in 1761 from Gerardus Stuyvesant, renaming it Gramercy Seat, an anglicization of the name given to the swamp that was located there called Crommessie (derived from the Dutch for either "crooked swamp" or "crooked knife"). A small brook, called Crommessie Vly, depicted in this map and used as a surveying point, wound its way through the farm before flowing down to the East River. In 1831 Duane's son, James Duane (1769–1842), sold twenty-two acres of land to Samuel Ruggles, who would develop Grammercy Park on the site.