September 2009 marks the 400th anniversary of the day Henry Hudson sailed up the Hudson and clapped eyes on our fair city, likely the first western explorer to do so. Of course he didn’t immediately finding himself dazzled by Streisand on Broadway and fighting tooth, claw and nail for a 300 ft sq junior one bedroom at $2400 a month in the Village where he’d be forced to use his oven as storage space. What he would have seen has long been lost in the mists of time and cement.

The “Mannahatta project” (Mannahatta being the Lenape native name, as recorded on the Hudson voyage) to work out what Manhattan looked like pre-building on every square inch and it’s fascinating. Why do basements along Minetta Lane sometimes flood? Well a river runs through it, or to be more precise underneath it- yes Minetta lane overlies an old brook. There are other bodies of water and old marsh below us and this is something that building planners have to deal with. Having trouble cycling into Harlem? There’s a geographical fault line that runs across Manhattan at 125th street, and Murray Hill was once, well, a ridge and major feature on the landscape.

While much excitement arose when a coyote was found in (and evicted from) Central Park in 2006, knowing which animals would once have thrived here is also a natural history mystery.

Find out more in this National Geographic article, the Mannahatta Project website and there is an exhibition at The Museum of the City of New York.