Estate / Collection: Collection of a New York Surveyor

GOERCK, CASIMIR
Map of several lots of ground belonging to Mr. Wm. W. Gilbert. Manuscript plan in ink and colors, with "Surveyed and laid out into lots New York Dec. 16th 1794 by Casimir Th Goerck City Surveyor." 13 x 13 inches (33 x 33 cm). The map backed. Stains and toning, small losses to border, tears, later pencil markings.

A very rare manuscript map by Casimir Goerck, one of New York's first City Surveyors, here planning the Greenwich Village Streets owned by notable patriot and silversmith William W. Gilbert. The map shows a stretch of Christopher Street at north, named thenabouts for Charles Christopher Amos (for whom Charles Street is also named) bounded by Herring Street (soon to be renamed Bleecker Street) at west, and short Gilbert Street to the south with Cozine Street tucked between. Written in manuscript and not presented as a street is "Ground Belonging to Th Ludlow." Small Cozine Street was named for Gerrit Cosine (Cozyn in Dutch records) who died in 1769, his daughter Catherine having married the silversmith from one street over, William W. Gilbert, in 1767. This map shows the earliest naming of these streets. Not long after this survey, Cozine Street was to become Grove Street and Gilbert Street renamed Reason Street for the residency of Thomas Paine, morphed into Raisin Street, and renamed Barrow Street by when the land became city property in 1809. This is a remarkable early map offering the earliest incantation of the naming of these Greenwich Village streets.