Presented by Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel:

Who knew that Gouverneur Morris—the brilliant, charismatic, and romantic founder who played a central role in shaping the U.S. Constitution—also helped create the Manhattan street grid?

The streets surrounding this bookstore are part of Lower Manhattan’s confusing jumble, shaped by the happenstance of early settlement in New Amsterdam. After helping design the Constitution, Morris turned his talents to bringing order to the rest of Manhattan. As the leading member of the commission responsible for the 1811 street plan, he helped imagine and impose the grid of streets and avenues familiar to all of us today.

Join us to learn about an important chapter in the story of how Manhattan became Manhattan—and about the remarkable founder who helped make it possible.

William M. Treanor is the Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Constitutional Law and Constitutional History and Dean Emeritus at Georgetown Law Center. He has served as both dean of Georgetown Law and Fordham Law School. He received a B.A. and a J.D. from Yale University and a Ph.D from Harvard University. He has written extensively on the original understanding of the Constitution, and his book on the drafting of the United States Constitution Fathers of the Constitution: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Creation of the American Republic will be published next year by W.W. Norton. He has held a range of positions in the government, including service as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice and Associate Counsel in the Iran-Contra Independent Counsel’s Office. He is currently a Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School and a Visiting Scholar at Fordham Law School, and he is a contributing expert for the Netflix series “The American Experiment.” He has been elected a Fellow of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The National Jurist magazine has chosen him as one of the most influential people in legal education five times, and he has received the World Jurist Association’s Medal of Honor and the American Lawyer’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Jeremy Woodoff retired three years ago from a career in city planning and historic preservation. After working for three years in Savannah, Georgia’s community planning and development department, he joined the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, where he worked for 20 years in the environmental review and preservation departments. He specialized in reviewing public sector projects with special interests in historic parks and public streets in historic districts. After leaving LPC, Jeremy spent the next 22 years in the small historic preservation office at the city’s Department of Design and Construction. Jeremy received his bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Oberlin College and his master’s in city planning from Harvard University. Following retirement, he joined the boards of several preservation-oriented organizations, including the Historic Districts Council, Bowne House Historical Society, Park Slope Civic Council, and Save America’s Clocks. He is currently president of the New York Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society.