Hi BobNY - the NYPL digital collection site is a wonderful revamp - it took you that long to find something haha. Anyhow thanks for putting me back there - I'd not been there for a while.
Just a quick question did you mean the 1853 map was incomplete or the building of NYC itself? The reason I ask is that I got to getting plates from the Perris maps (info says 1857-1862) for addresses that interest me and laying them over the 1853 map and noticed big changes. Chambers Street for example ends pretty much at Park Row/Chatham Street on the 1853 map but cuts across Pearl St/Bowery and runs down to Cherry in Perris.
I was wondering whether so much was built or altered between say 1853 and the dates for Perris and might explain there being no church earlier? That block hadn't been completed?