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MANHATTAN 1609 vs. 2009: Natural Wonder to Urban Jungle

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Christa Loecher
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« on: April 26, 2009, 02:51:14 am »

MANHATTAN 1609 vs. 2009: Natural Wonder to Urban Jungle



April 23, 2009--Before it was an urban jungle, Manhattan was home to the Lenape Indians, who called the island Mannahatta, or "land of many hills."

Built up and--thanks to land reclamation--out, downtown Manhattan, circa 2008, towers over the New York City island as it was more than 400 years ago (computer rendering at right), when Europeans first set eyes on it--complete with campfires.

The images were created for the Wildlife Conservation Society's Mannahatta Project, which launched April 20 and includes a book, museum exhibition, and Web site. The yearlong celebration of Manhattan's natural history aims to recreate the island as it appeared 400 years ago, on the day English explorer Henry Hudson arrived in 1609.

--Ker Than
—Image courtesy Markley Boyer, Mannahatta Project/Wildlife Conservation Society 
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Christa Loecher
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« Reply #1 on: April 26, 2009, 03:22:00 am »



Built partly on reclaimed land, the Battery Park City neighborhood (left) anchors the western side of modern Manhattan's southern tip, whose shoreline has been extended considerably since 1609.

As with today's Manhattan, part of Mannahatta's charm was its neighborhoods, said Eric Sanderson, leader of the Mannahatta Project, which launched April 20, 2009. But Mannahatta's enclaves were defined by their unique communities of plants and animals, including wolves, mountain lions, elk, deer, and beavers.

"There were 55 different ecological communities," Sanderson estimated. Acre for acre, "that's more ecological communities ... than most national parks have."
—Image courtesy Markley Boyer, Mannahatta Project/Wildlife Conservation Society
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Christa Loecher
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« Reply #2 on: April 26, 2009, 03:25:14 am »



In 1609 a large Lenape Indian settlement called the eastern foot of Inwood Hill home (see campfires in illustration at right), as does the Inwood neighborhood today. The site offered the Indians convenient access to the Harlem River (left) and the Hudson River, homes to rich fisheries.

Inwood Hill Park contains the last natural forest and salt marsh in Manhattan.

"Legend has it that there was a tree in the park where Peter Minuit [a colonial administrator for the Dutch East India Company] bought the island from the Indians [in 1626]," said Eric Sanderson, head of the Mannahatta Project, which began April 20, 2009. "It's supposed to have been blown down in 1926."
—Image courtesy Markley Boyer, Mannahatta
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Christa Loecher
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« Reply #3 on: April 26, 2009, 03:26:40 am »



Four hundred years ago Manhattan's Upper East Side (left foreground) and Harlem neighborhoods (left background) were Lenape Indian hunting-and-gathering territories (illustration at right).

Mannahatta Project director Eric Sanderson hopes that knowledge of Manhattan's past will help urban planners build better cities tomorrow.

He has a thought experiment for them: "If you knew everything about Mannahatta's original ecology and could rebuild Manhattan using the best ideas of green design today, what kind of city would you build? And what would it be like to live there?"
—Image courtesy Markley Boyer, Mannahatta Project/Wildlife Conservation Society
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