Other cities I'm familiar with that have extensive alley systems are Baltimore and Savannah (in Savannah they're called "lanes." and take the name of the adjacent street to the north). The lack of service alleys in the vaunted 1811 "Commissioner's Plan" for New York is only one of its many flaws. Sometimes I think this "plan" was so bad that it must have been meant only as an exercise to see what the maximum of development area to street could theoretically be, and that it was never anticipated that the city would actually be built this way! I have no evidence, for this, however.
Other cities I'm familiar with that have extensive alley systems are Baltimore and Savannah (in Savannah they're called "lanes." and take the name of the adjacent street to the north). The lack of service alleys in the vaunted 1811 "Commissioner's Plan" for New York is only one of its many flaws. Sometimes I think this "plan" was so bad that it must have been meant only as an exercise to see what the maximum of development area to street could theoretically be, and that it was never anticipated that the city would actually be built this way! I have no evidence, for this, however.
Very cool!