There was not the slightest use in trying to make its twisty curlicue streets conform to any engineering plan on earth; so those sensible old-time folk didn't try.

William Bridges, architect and city surveyor, entrusted with the job, mentions "that part of the city which lies south of Greenwich Lane and North Street, and which was not included in the powers vested in the commissioners." And so Our Village remains itself, utterly and arrogantly untouched by the confining orthodoxy of the rest of the town! The passing of the British rule was the signal for variously radical democratic changes, not only in customs and forms, but in nomenclature.
After they had melted up a leaden statue of King George and made it into American bullets, they went about abolishing every blessed thing in the city which could remind them of England and English ways.

The names of the streets were, of course, nearly all intrinsically English.

A few of the old Dutch names persisted--Bleecker, Vandam, and so on--but nearly every part of the town was named for the extolling of Britain and British royalty.

Away then, said New York, with the sign manuals of crowns and autocracy! In 1783, when the English evacuated Manhattan, the _Advertiser_ published: "May the remembrance of this DAY be a lesson to princes!" and in this spirit was the last vestige of imperial rule systematically expunged from the city.