Mysterious Fairmont

While looking at old maps around Manhattan, I noticed another area that always seemed mysterious. It occasionally appeared in dreams.

Next to the highly formal city there were a few highly informal rural areas with scattered houses and undefined streets. Just across the river to the southeast was an area called Fairmont on maps. It wasn’t called anything or even noticed in real life. Old plat maps showed a former townsite, but the only remnant in the ’50s was a dump near the river with a couple of houses.

Here’s a history in maps.

First the idealized plat in 1909. Note the little parks or squares at each corner, and the roundabout on the south side. The developers had grand ideas, narrow NYC-size lots, and delusions about the wisdom of building in a floodplain, ESPECIALLY because the 1903 flood that MOVED the river was fresh in memory. Even when not flooding, the river lapped up against this area.

Second a 1955 topo map, which shows the street pattern that I remember.

Now the current map as seen on Google Streets. Looking into the area, most is a nicely kept park, with two or three of the old houses still occupied, looking considerably better than they did in the ’50s.