Despite having seen these odd little markings throughout Brooklyn all of our life, we never gave them much thought.
But now that we stopped to think about them, the Monument Topographical Bureau Brooklyn most likely no longer exists, hasn’t in decades, and yet it probably still receives either City or State funding somehow — because New York is crazy like that with funding.
11209, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Monument Topographical Bureau Brooklyn, New York State, NYC Funding, NYS Budget
The Topographic Bureau still exists in each of the Five Boroughs. They are responsible for maintaining the records related to lands owned (street lines, parks and others) by the Borough.
Maps showing the current alignment of roads, the abandonement and creation of new streets, bench mark elevations and other information is present.
Could you give me an idea of where that particular monument box is, there aren’t many of them left in Brooklyn and I would like to locate it.
Hi Jon,
Thank you very much for that awesome enlightenment.
This particular monument box is located in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The east side of 4th Avenue at 73rd Street. (Maybe 74th?).
We want to say that we’ve seen several of these markings in the neighborhood. We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for them.
Any idea if these are related to the Coast Guard Topigraphical markers?
They weren’t originally set up to relate to the Costal and Geodetic marks. Each of the Five Boroughs has an independent set of horizontal and vertical reference points. None of which are directly related to the Costal and Geodetic Survey points. I will poke around and see if I can come up with a direct relationship.
The Brooklyn system is a set of arbitrary coordinates with the zero point somewhere up in Queens (I think, if you are interested I’ll let you know where it is, I am currently working on a project for the City that relates directly).
The Costal and Geodetic points are related to Latitude and Longitude.
There is one located on the NE corner of West 8th Street and Quentin Road. I have noticed many more in the neighborhood.
I just photographed a box this weekend on Flatbush Brooklyn. I as well, was very intrigued, specially since the one I found was by an active street that still has railways exposed. I wanted to find the relationship between them.
Since they are responsible for maintaining records of land owned, I wonder if these records are open to the public and how we can access them for study