1874 Holmes Map of the Lower East Side and Two Bridges. Manhattan, NYC

This is a John Bute Holmes 1874 cadastral map of the Lower East Side and Two Bridges neighborhoods, which have historically been considered one neighborhood. A traditionally immigrant, working class neighborhood, the map depicts from Oliver Street to Montgomery Street and from Division Street to the East River.

The Rutgers Farm

The Rutgers Farm, which occupied the entirety of this map, was purchased by Marmanus Rutgers in 1728. The Rutgers family had been brewers in the Dutch colony of Nieuw Nederland for five generations, which was a valuable commodity due to the polluted municipal water supply. Later, the farm was broken up into smaller parcels for inheritances and eventually sold off as individual lots.

Holmes' 'Farm Maps'

In the early 19th century most of Manhattan was undeveloped farm lands, the property of wealthy landowners with claims dating to the Dutch period of New York's history. The northern 2/3rd Manhattan was dotted with farm lands and sprawling gentlemanly estates, many with great manor houses overlooking the Hudson River. The Commissioner's Plan of 1811 and the 1807 Commission Law, laid the street grid through many of these properties and gave the city the right to claim these lands under eminent domain, providing due compensation to the landowners. While this work occurred early in lower Manhattan, central and upper Manhattan were not formally acquired by the city until the mid-19th century.

Holmes became fascinated by the early history of Manhattan real estate ownership, recognizing the wealth to be accrued by accurately understanding the history of city land ownership, division, and inheritance. Moreover, Holmes allied himself with the corrupt Tweed administration, assuring himself and his allies even greater wealth and political power from the eminent domain seizure of old Manhattan estates. Holmes created a series of maps, reminiscent of John Randall's 'Farm Maps', overlaid with property data, showing the borders of old estates, and notating the breakup of the lands among various heirs. The complex work of compiling the maps earned Holmes a fortune, with one newspaper suggesting on his death in 1887 that some of his individual maps were worth more than 30,000 USD. There is no complete carto-bibliography of Holmes' maps, but we believe there to be at least 50 maps, possibly more.

Provenance

This map was acquired as a part of a large collection of New York cadastral maps associated with the layer Ronald K. Brown, a Deed Commissioner operating in the late 19th and early 20th century with an office at 76 Nassau Street, New York - not far from Holmes' own office. Most of the maps in the collection, including the present map, bear Brown's stamp on the verso. The maps were passed to Dominic Anthony Trotta, a real estate agent working under Brown. Brown seems to have ceased business around 1919, but Trotta continued as a real estate agent, becoming a New York Tax Commissioner in 1934 under the Fiorello H. La Guardia administration. The maps remained with Trotta's heirs until our acquisition of the collection.

Publication History and Census

This map was created and published by John Bute Holmes in 1874. Six examples are part of institutional collections at the New York Public Library, the New York Historical Society, Princeton University, the New York State Library, Harvard, and The British Library.