More Manhattan

Previous item detoured me into Manhattan history. The Manhattan city website had a recent record of archeological finds. Some of the locations (like the Goodnow house) are thoroughly familiar. I used to do my own digging there in an old midden, without thinking of it as archeology. I was just looking for old auto parts.

This one struck a note and may answer a question:

= = = = = START QUOTE:

14RY381 was located in Lots 68 and 69 of southeastern Manhattan on the south side
of Colorado Street between Wyandotte Avenue and Second (previously First) Street. Archival research revealed that this was the site of a private residence, hotel, and boarding house between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. One of the owners of this property was Oliver Simms, an early African-American resident of Manhattan. A stone house stood on the east end of Lot 69 between at least 1871 and 1950. Another building on the lot served as a hotel or boarding house between about 1885 and 1915, after which it may have served as a private residence.

= = = = = END QUOTE.

The location and the hotel reminded me of this 2016 item. A K-State study of streamlining in the ’20s included several pics of cars posed in a mysterious part of town. I wrote:

I’m trying to identify the backgrounds. Some pics show cornfields, one shows a building that looks like a low-class hotel. None look familiar to me. They look edge-of-townish, but have standard Manhattan City Curbs, so they’re not out in the country. They’re not near K-State, because that part of town was solidly filled with houses. Guesses: Southeast part of town around Pott and Juliette? Or east side around 2nd and Moro? Both locations have been completely redone since 1970, so Googlestreet won’t help. 2nd no longer exists, and Pottawatomie has moved.

I didn’t include the hotel pic in the item on streamlining. Here it is:

On the street renumbering: The original plat had named Avenues interspersed with the vertical numbered Streets, but the pattern didn’t sync with house numbers.

Wyandotte Avenue
1
2
3
4
5
Juliaett Avenue
6
7
8
9
10
Manhattan Avenue
11
12
13
14
15
Delaware Avenue

Later when they started using hundreds for house numbers, they realized this unsynced the hundreds with the numbered streets. They redid the pattern to

Wyandotte Avenue
2
3
4
5
6
Juliette Avenue (simplified spelling)
8
9
10
11
12
Manhattan Avenue
14
15
16
17
18
Delaware Avenue

This had the added advantage of subbing names for 1, 7, 13, which are troublesome numbers. I discussed the southeast quarter of town in detail here, and discussed the plat itself here.