If you've ever been hanging out in one of the green spaces around New York City, like Central Park or one of the other smaller parks, you may find your mind wandering away from the City we know. 

In that special nucleus of nature that may only exist for 30ft in any direction, your mind may meander back in time, to a year when the island of Manhattan was more primeval than it is now. 

How about, say, 1609? It was pretty amazing. There were, uh, no buildings. Or at least there were no buildings like the ones we're used to now. The only things scraping the skyline were birds.

Now, The Welikia Project has gathered as much data as possible to create a rendering of Manhatta, just as Dutch colonists were beginning to arrive on the island in 1609.

FYI, "welikia" means "my good home" in the language of Manhattan's last original inhabitants, the Native American Lenape tribe. If you don't already, you should know that "Manhatta" is the root word of "Manhattan," meaning "island of many hills," in the Lenape tongue.  

[anad]

Going back in time with this map is incredible. Manhattan was just forests, streams, marshes, creeks and so on. What's especially cool about the map is that you can search for landmarks and addresses to see what the area likely looked like back in the day.

Amazing! 

via 6sqft

It goes without saying that you'll be surprised in one way or another by this map, but what caught our eye is that the Great Pond in Central Park didn't exist way back then.

We, like many others already knew that Central Park is a great feat of landscape architecture, but we didn't know the pond was fully man-made. That's pretty impressive, but it can't hold a flame to the majesty that was Manhatta, pre-colonization. 

Check it out and go see what your neighborhood was like 400 years ago. We bet it was prime frolicking real estate...

So Who Exactly Lives in Your 'Hood? Check Out This Color-Coded Immigrant Map of NYC.

[via 6sqft]