The early settlers of Manhattan had no conception of the proportions the town was ultimately to assume, and, hence, formed no comprehensive plan for its outlay. In 1656 they resolved to lay out the streets of the city, which was done in a most grotesque manner. Washington Irving ludicrously describes the occurrence thus: "The sage council not being able to determine any plan for the building of their city, the cows, in a laudable fit of patriotism, took it under their peculiar charge, and as they went to and from pasture, established paths through the bushes, on each side of which the good folks built their houses, which is one'' cause of the rambling and picturesque turns and labyrinths which distinguish certain streets of New York at this very day." Many of the streets in the lower part of the city have been straightened and improved at vast expense. On the 3d of April, 1807, an Act was passed, appointing Simeon Dewitt, Governor Morris, and John Rutherford, to lay out by careful survey the whole island, which was accordingly done, and the map of the same filed in the secretary's office in March, 1811. To the commendable forethought of these gentlemen is the city indebted for the admirable arrangement of its uptown streets and avenues. This survey extended to One Hundred and Fifty-fourth street, but it has since been extended to Kings Bridge. Below Fourteenth street much irregularity still exists in the streets, and probably always will, to the infinite perplexity of strangers; but above that point the avenues and streets run at right angles to each other, the direction of the former being nearly north and south, and the latter east and west, from river to, river, and numbering each way from Fifth avenue. The avenues number from south to north.

The streets, avenues, squares, and places on Manhattan now number nearly seven hundred, about three hundred miles of which are paved, and are illuminated at night by about nineteen thousand gas lamps. The first pavements were laid in what is now Stone street, between Broad and Whitehall streets, in 1658. Bridge street was paved the same year, and several others running through marshy sections soon after. These pavements were of cobble-stone, without sidewalks, and with wooden gutters running through the centre of the streets. Broadway was paved in this manner, in 1707, from Trinity Church to Bowling Green.

In 1790 the first sidewalks on Manhattan were laid. They extended along Broadway, from Vesey to Murray street, and on the opposite side for the same distance along the Bridewell fence. These were narrow pavements of brick, flagstone being yet unknown to the authorities. No plan for numbering the streets was considered until 1793, when a crude system was introduced. The old cobble-stone pavements have been succeeded by the Belgian or square-stone; and of late the Nicolson and the Stafford, different styles of wooden, have been introduced. A concrete pavement, composed of gravel, broken stone, cinders, coal ashes, mixed in definite proportions with tar, pitch, resin, and asphaltum, has been spread over the streets, with tolerable success in some instances, and perfect failure in others. Eighty-five miles of the Belgian have been laid, which probably gives the best satisfaction of any introduced. It consists of blocks of bluish trap-rock, made slightly pyramidal in form, and set in sand with the, base upward. It is very even and durable.