In a message dated 9/28/98 8:38:40 AM EST, [log in to unmask] writes:

<< In Reminiscences of New York by an Octogenarian. for 1816, the author
describes, "The Lake Tour Road, from Thirty ninth Street and Bloomingdale Road
to Seventh Avenue, thence to Ninth Avenue between Forty second and Forty third
streets."

 I was unaware of any lakes in central Manhattan. Was there one, perhaps
 near Murray Hill, or was Lake a personal name. Any educated guesses?
  David Minor >>

Townsend MacCoun prepared a well-documented series of pre-Revolutionary era
topographic maps for Manhattan, published in 1909.  The latest I have, 1783,
shows no likely body of water in that vicinity (including the old Croton
reservoir site at 42nd & Sixth, referenced by another correspondant.)

I do not know the work to which you refer, but there is something peculiar
about an 1816 account referring so specifically to Seventh & Ninth Avenues and
various cross-streets so far north of the settled city - the numbered
street/avenue system had only been instituted in 1811, and was still almost
entirely on paper.  Even if legally established, it seems unlikely that they
would be referenced in a colloquial account.

Christopher Gray