We have now reached the point where the old city, which had grown up haphazard, with crooked streets, wooded hills, and fertile valleys traversed by streams and winding country roads, begins to be absorbed into a new city, in which antiquity and nature are no longer respected, with streets laid out in accordance with a carefully considered symmetrical plan. ... Unfortunately, this plan, although possessing the merits of simplicity and directness, lacked entirely the equally essential elements of variety of picturesqueness, which demand a large degree of respect for the natural conformation of the land. The new plan was entirely deficient in sentiment and charm, and with its gradual development, little by little, the individuality, the interest, and the beauty of one choice spot after another have been swept away scarcely anything remains to remind us of the primitive beauty and the fascinating diversity of natural charms we know Manhattan once possessed. The year 1811 marks the end of the little old city and the beginning of the great modern metropolis.