Eighth Avenue (Manhattan)
Eighth Avenue is a major north–south avenue on the west side of Manhattan in New York City, carrying northbound traffic below 59th Street. It is one of the original avenues of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 to run the length of Manhattan, though today the name changes twice: At 59th Street/Columbus Circle, it becomes Central Park West, where it forms the western boundary of Central Park, and north of 110th Street/Frederick Douglass Circle, it is known as Frederick Douglass Boulevard before merging onto Harlem River Drive north of 155th Street.
Facing north on Eighth Avenue from 32nd Street
Hearst Tower at West 57th Street and Eighth Avenue
The American Museum of Natural History at 200 Central Park West
Housing cooperatives on Central Park West: The San Remo (far right), The Langham (center-right), The Dakota (center-left), and The Majestic (far left)
Commissioners' Plan of 1811
The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 was the original design for the streets of Manhattan above Houston Street and below 155th Street, which put in place the rectangular grid plan of streets and lots that has defined Manhattan on its march uptown until the current day. It has been called "the single most important document in New York City's development," and the plan has been described as encompassing the "republican predilection for control and balance ... [and] distrust of nature". It was described by the Commission that created it as combining "beauty, order and convenience."
Simeon De Witt
The only known image of John Randel Jr., the Commission's chief surveyor, by an unknown artist, probably Ezra Ames.
The park-like grounds of the American Museum of Natural History – called "Theodore Roosevelt Park" since 1958, but officially part of Central Park – is the only one of the planned public spaces of the Commissioners' Plan which still exists; it was to be "Manhattan Square".
William M. "Boss" Tweed (1870)