Estate / Collection: Collection of a New York Surveyor

[MAP - NEW YORK CITY]

HOLMES, JOHN BUTE. Map of the East & West De Lancey Farms... New York: Miller's Lith., September 1865. Hand-colored lithographed map, cloth border, backed with linen, rolled, 34 x 38 3/4 inches. Faint toning, a few stains, minor tears in the margin at the lower right, and creasing throughout the map, manuscript annotations to linen backing.

John Bute Holmes produced a series of cadastral maps showing historic property lines in Manhattan superimposed over the rapidly expanding mid-nineteenth-century city's grid. Holmes, a colorful character, was an Irish-born city surveyor for Boss Tweed's Tammany-controlled administration. His maps were intended to aid the city government in seizing private land from historic landowners under eminent domain laws.

This map shows the entirety of Delancey farm, a massive, over 300-acre estate that covered the area between The Bowery and the East River from Division to Stanton Streets, now Chinatown and the Lower East Side. The farm is overlayed onto the crowded immigrant neighborhood of the 1860s. Delancey Farm had belonged to James De Lancey, who began developing it into streets and lots in the 1760s. His plan included a spacious park called Delancey Square, which appears in green on this map, and also on the Ratzer plan, which is evidently the source for most of the historical details included in the map. Delancey, an English loyalist, was forced to flee New York City after the Revolutionary War. The Corporation of the City confiscated his land, keeping much of his original layout intact and paying some restitution. The land was then subdivided and sold by the city. The corporation ultimately decided to eliminate Delancey Square and divide it into more saleable lots.