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This winter, I set out on my own walks through Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn using the two maps as my guide. Today, 250 years after Ratzer completed surveying for what would ultimately become two maps-the so-called “Ratzen” Plan and the larger Ratzer Map-his unprecedented explorations give us a unique window into what New York was like on the eve of the Revolution. Considering the low esteem in which the Redcoats were held that winter, it isn’t hard to imagine Ratzer being met with suspicious glances every time he paused on a corner to get his bearings. Yet over the winter of 1766-67, one of those soldiers-Bernard Ratzer, a lieutenant in the 60th Regiment of Foot-traipsed across Manhattan and Brooklyn surveying for what would become the most significant map of the city that had ever been created. New York’s legislature had also refused to fund and implement the Quartering Act of 1765, which was designed to house and feed soldiers flooding into the city after the French and Indian War.
![map new york city sharp copiers map new york city sharp copiers](http://www.old-maps.com/NY/ny_townmaps/nyc/manhattan/nyc_1755_Maerschalck_web.jpg)
Two years earlier, the Stamp Act Protests had brought the city to the brink of bloodshed. Though the War of Independence would not officially begin until the spring of 1775, tensions in colonial cities like Boston and New York were already running high. The winter of 1767 was a difficult time to walk the streets of New York City as a British soldier.