A curiosity about the grid plan the Commissioners chose for New York City is that while many other cities used a square grid, they did not. Perhaps influenced by the dimensions of the island, which is longer north–south than it is east–west, Manhattan's blocks are long rectangles, with the east–west dimension, while varied, larger than the big grid of Salt Lake City, while the north–south dimension, at , just longer than the small grid of Carson City. Historian Gerard Koeppel remarks that "while the grid brought order to the place, it also made it a place of extremes."