To divide the Common Lands, as they were called, into sellable lots, and to lay out roads to service them, the Council hired Goerck, one of a handful of officially approved "city surveyors", to survey them. Goerck, who was related to the Roosevelt family by marriage, was instructed to make lots of about eachprecision in such matters was not to be expected with the available surveying tools, given the topography and ground cover of the Common Landsand to lay out roads to access the lots. He completed his task in December, only six months later, creating 140 lots of varying sizes. Although not laid out in a gridiron patternGoerck was not instructed to do somost of the lots were organized into two columns of 45 lots with a road between the columns. The lots were oriented as the lots of the future Commissioners' Plan would be, with the east–west axis longer than the north–south axis; their five-acre size would become the template for the Commissioners' five acre blocks; and Goerck's middle road would eventually reappear on the Commissioners' Plan, without acknowledgment, as the wide Fifth Avenue.