----------------------------Original message----------------------------
     Mark,
 
     We will copy several of the early ward maps, particularly 1850, for
     you, and send them on to you for your patron. It will be next week, as
     I am off to Tennessee for a few days starting tomorrow.
 
     Yes, the upper wards were subdivided as population moved northward,
     and grew in the particular wards.
 
     The ward system was dropped around the turn of the century with the
     loss of the Tamany Hall ward politics. The blocks and lots were all
     renumbered for tax purposes, in 1891, as a part of this
     reorganization. Ward maps continued to be printed after that, [out of
     inertia?] and eventually we start seeing the current system of
     Assembly District and Election District maps.
 
     None of these wards, a.d.s or e.d.s, of course, are coextensive with
     Census data areas, so...problems abound.
 
     Sorry to muddy the waters.
 
     Alice Hudson
     Map Division,
     Center for the Humanities
     The New York Public Library
 
 
 
 
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: land area of NYC wards, 1850
Author:  Mark Thomas <[log in to unmask]> at ~Internet-Mail
Date:    4/2/97 3:36 PM
 
 
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
We have a patron who wants the land area of Ward 1, 4, and 11 in New York
City in 1850.  This has to do with calculating the population density.
The population by ward is given in the 1850 population census (Dubester
30), but they don't list the area like they have in more recent censuses for
political and census geography divisions.  Even a map of that time
showing the ward boundaries would be good as long as it was at a large
enough scale to make area estimates.
 
Also, did the wards stay the same over the years?  Looking in the
Encyclopedia of NYC (p. 1236-7) and the Historical Atlas of NYC (p.
80-81), it seems that they kept subdividing the northern one over the
years, but for #'s 1,4, and 11 you could probably get the area for the
1830s or the 1890s and it would be the same as for 1850.  Is this true?
 
If anyone has a lead (or the answer!), I'd appreciate it.
 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mark Thomas                         | Yet there's not a train I
Perkins Library, Duke University    |     wouldn't take
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