This article, that was published in the New Yorker, is a reminder that Central Park's eight hundred and forty-three acres could have been a hundred and fifty-three rectangular city blocks, arrayed with tall buildings. The 1811 Commissioners’ Plan included only a few squares and parade grounds.
In 1807 the Common Council asked the state to appoint three commissioners to plan the city’s development.They hired a young Albany native named John Randel, Jr., to survey the island and draft the 1811 Commissioners’ Plan, an eight-foot-long blueprint for the grid, which was to run from North (now Houston) Street to 155th Street.
In doing this, the land was literally marked with stones and bolts to layout the grid. Until recently the only known remaining stone had been located downtown, and then another stone revealed itself on the upper east side. In 2014 two men dug a rather large hole in a lawn in Central Park, and found another one, a roughly three foot tall, nine-inch square white stone.
To read the article in its entirety, as well as to learn more about these special markers that are located in and around Central Park, click here.