Walking Manahatta

Manahatta (with outline of island today)So often collections of New York essays involve some aspect of the relationship between the people and the city, and rightfully so. The urban environment is ripe for study, and the characters that exist in those environments are equally interesting. Ian Frazier’s Gone to New York is no exception, but I wonder if Frazier ever thought about New York before people, or before the building of our urban environment.

But, where it seems other New York essayists have forgotten, someone else remembered. Enter the Manahatta Project. The Manahatta Project is, simply put, an attempt to “rebuild” or “reimagine” what the island of Manhattan looked like prior to colonization. I’ve been semi-following the Manahatta Project since my first semester at NYU watching it grow. (Most recently I saw a big glossy coffee table book at Barnes and Noble called “The Manahatta Project, and I’m assuming it’s from the same folks.)

Unfortunately, despite my continual interest in the project, I’m still not sure what the history or future of it is. When I first heard about it someone told me it was “some guy’s” project. Later, I heard a museum was going to make a scale model of the island of Manahatta (incidentally, the name “Manhattan” comes from a the original name given to the island by Natives, “Manahatta,” which roughly translates to “Many Hills.”) Now, there’s a website where you can take a virtual tour of “Manahatta” created by the Wildlife Conservation Society (click on the image at the top left to go to the website.) Even now I’m not sure who started the project, or where it came from, but I’ve been absolutely fascinated with it.

But all that said, the original island—Manahatta—makes me think of the essays about certain areas of New York that we’ve read. Imagine taking a stroll through Bowling Green when it was still, in fact, Green. Or, what would Ian Frazier write of Canal Street if he were able to walk along the river that was once there? And what if a tourist were to walk to the Empire State Building only to find trees and deer? The transformation is absolutely fascinating to be sure, and it makes me think of New York’s past present and future. (You can glean a sense of how much has changed by the attached picture. The bright green line surrounding Manahatta is actually the outline of today’s Manhattan. THAT much was created by landfill.) Maybe no one cares as much as I do, but if I had my way I’d like to take a walk through Manahatta--just for a day--rather than Manhattan and write essays about it.