The Last Imperial Legacy in the United States
A letter in The Times yesterday, explains why a city block in the US is the size it is.
City blocks, and indeed much of North America, were laid out in imperial measurements, many of which are still used today
Sir, Tim Teeman said in the Saturday Review on Aug 13th states that “200ft is the length of a city block”. Not so: it is 198ft, because that equals 66 yards or 3 chains or 12 rods, the units by which the whole of North America was surveyed and laid out, within the system of customary measures that still prevails there and survives unofficially in Britain.
I suspect that very few measurements in English cities, towns and the countryside are just how they were originally laid out or modified. They’ve just done the pavements outside my house, and I suspect the road is now about a centimetre narrower, as they’ve replaced the kerbs round the trees, which of course have grown since they were last replaced. I wonder if the Dutch company worked to Imperial or Metric units. I suspect that if they measured everything, it was the latter, but I suspect most of it was well done using the Mark One eyeball.
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The Anonymous Widower 
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