“ Painters from Poussin to Seurat, Picasso to Mondrian, Pollock to Chuck Close have exploited the special power of grids to create order yet also highlight small differences. Manhattan’s grid is not perfectly regular. Some blocks are longer than others. Some avenues are wider. Broadway cuts diagonally across six north-south streets, and those cuts have made room for public spaces…We feel all these shifts in the grid, alert to changes thanks to the expectation of sameness.
— Michael Kimmelman, “The Grid at 200: Lines That Shaped Manhattan”
