| When Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s neighborhoods were developed
in the nineteenth century, they were not built up methodically
and neatly, one block at a time, with one street being finished,
before the next block was started. Instead, new development presented
a ragged, almost gap-toothed appearance, with clusters of row houses
standing forlornly in otherwise open fields. This 1877 photograph
of the north side of West 133rd Street in Harlem, between Fifth
and Lenox Avenues, shows just such a surreal landscape of new Neo-Grec
style row houses standing in isolated clusters, waiting for other
row houses to fill in the missing pieces, and for the street to
be paved and trees to be planted along the curbs. The three houses
in the foreground, built at the Lenox Avenue end of the block,
are 49, 51, and 53 West 133rd Street.
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