You should also note that a true acre 43,560 sq ft should not be confused with a builder’s acre which is 40,000 square feet or usually 200 ft X 200 ft as often established in plot subvisions where many of your readers either own or are considering buying a house in the suburban communities surrounding
NYC .
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Lounging in my hammock on my 40 acres, surrounded by many more, reading about the city. It truly is the best of both worlds.
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When we moved here years ago, properties were heavily wooded and zoned for 1 acre. Our family could hike through the woods behind other homes. Neighbors were friendly. However, that changed when new people moved in and decided to mow down beautiful trees that were beautiful and many years old. They created soulless expansive lawns and fenced their properties off. Sad.
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Can someone help me understand this statement: "[...] a one-acre lot, the minimum size allowed for homes in many suburban municipalities [...]"?
Which suburban municipalities have an acre-minimum for a home? No suburb I've lived in, adjacent to Miami, Houston, Detroit, New York, or Los Angeles, has such limitations.
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Paradise Valley AZ (tucked between Phoenix and Scottsdale) has 1 acre minimum zoning.
@robert Well, that's at least one municipality! Thanks :)
@Lisa Amherst NH has a 4 acre minimum
Greetings from my 0.0918 acres (4000 sqft) of NYC.
If we used standard SI units, this article would be unnecessary. Everywhere outside the USA, land is measured in hectares and homes are measured in square meters. Note that 1ha = 10,000 m^2. Easy...
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Very, very dry summer so far here in my neck of the woods, Michigan. My “acreage” is now brown and crispy unless I water it, which anymore, seems like a senseless waste of water and a big water bill for square footage only used by the dog. There are lovely large homes here on generous lots, but rarely do I see anyone outdoors – even kids.
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Come to New Mexico and live on 100 acres in the forest with a river for the same price as a small apartment in NYC. (--:
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@john scully But with steadily diminishing ground water supplies.
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Best take-away from this write-up for urban dwellers? The conceptualization of the space defined by an acre. Thank's for the mental picture of 1.1 acre equaling a professional football (NFL) field minus the end-zones. Or the Grand Central main terminal being .75 the size. Suddenly the scale was understood, eh?
John~
American Net'Zen
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In my experience, 450 square feet is the amount of land that can be vacuumed by a single man in a week.
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We have a twenty acre farm in Michigan, 90 miles from Chicago, 2 miles east of Lake Michigan beaches, that we paid $318,000 for ten years ago, on which we are taxed $2,300 annually.
I've never understood how anyone equates 'living' with paying many thousands of dollars for a 500#' studio in New York.
Culture and great restaurants exist pretty much everywhere.
Arguably better on both counts in Chicago where, again, housing costs are a small fraction of those in New York, and the only people living in 500#' abodes are college students and the destitute.
I will never understand why anyone, other than extraordinarily wealthy people, live there.
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@two cents I've never understood Chicago. It feels as though people from Chicago are constantly trying to convince others (and perhaps themselves) that Chicago is just as good as (insert major coastal city) and that Lake Michigan is just as good as the ocean. Nope, nope, nope.
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We bought a farm eight years ago. I told my friends in the city that the house wasn't anything special, but the living room was nine million square feet.
Priceless.
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My nearest neighbor is a half-mile away, and is the only light I see at night. A river runs through it, a migratory flyway over. Night is silent.
I lived in a 500 sq ft apartment in NYC for 27 years. The only thing I miss is good Ramen.
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According to the US Public Land Survey, a section, that is an area of one square mile, comprises 640 acres. 36 sections comprise a township.
A quarter section is 160 acres, the original size of a homestead (east of the 100th Meridian line.) A quarter-quarter section is thus 40 acres, the size of a piece of land that freed slaves after the Civil War, were given to become self-sufficient ('40 acres and a mule.')
Doing the math, a square mile (5280 feet-squared) equals 28,878,400 square feet. Divided by 640, an acre is 43,560 square feet. In the suburbs, a 'commercial' quarter-acre is rounded down to 40,000 square feet: if square, then 200 feet per side.
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... and 25 x 100 feet is a typical urban lot, in the cities of the original colonies. TomL wins the internet today!
@TomL Freed slaves were NOT given 40 acres; they weren't given anything. 40 acres and a mule, as you state, would have made many self sufficient which is why they idea was proposed; but, it never happened.
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@TomL Good review, but in your last sentence, I think you mean a commercial acre is 40,000 square feet.
After leaving Manhattan and moving to Chester County PA, we lived for many years on a one acre lot, with a 9 room house plus full finished basement and two car garage - - all for less than a tiny apartment in New York. It felt just fine, especially after breaking down and paying a pro with a huge mower to relieve me from cutting all that grass. That is the secret to contentment.
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Measuring and estimating are two things that many people are poor at these days. Take the square footage of a house....many cities and towns measure the footprint and multiply by the number of stories....I lived in a "2100"sq. ft house that was 1700 sq. ft......and had to pay taxes on the larger number. Most people just accept what someone tells them and never know the truth.
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100 450 sq ft apts does seem like a lot until you realize it is 10 apts wide and 10 apts long.
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This article is so funny! Here in the backwoods of GA I have a house in a .73 acre lot right inside the perimeter of a college town. I just realized my beautiful lot full of trees and birds, is just almost as big as Grand Central Station! I left NYC in 1990 because I wanted to be close to nature. I got that dream. But now I would love to have that 450 square studio. But I can't afford it. It's true that you have to be careful about what you wish for. So maybe soon, hopefully, I'll win the lottery and get my current wish of a studio in NYC!
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I know exactly how big an acre is since I own 1.03 acres in NJ.
It's a wonderful size for a family but it requires a lot of work.
Should have had more sons.
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@Rex or daughters...
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Is there a subtle underlying message here- "No one (family) should be living on an entire acre.?" That's probably true. Having lived on an acre or so in Chappaqua and the Tucson Foothills for 20 years and having lived on 1/20th of that amount of land during the rest of my life, I'd say my lifestyle was appreciably better when I owned no significant amount of land. Maybe this is just me, but unless you're a farmer, living among diverse neighbors in small spaces seems to improve one's quality of life.
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As long as they don’t live on top of you.
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@Crusader Rabbit
Au contraire.
My lifestyle is appreciably better now that I'm living on 33 wooded acres, with neighbors I can neither see nor hear.
I mow the grass (I've got an acre here, an acre there... There's no pressure), cut some firewood, do some gardening, and sit out on the porch, listening to the woods.
I've lived in Manhattan, and it was okay, before the Chain Stores came, but I'll take this any day over the city, and for half the price of a studio apartment, it's not a bad deal.
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@Crusader Rabbit
I am always astonished at the diversity in suburbia. Oh, maybe not the kind you are thinking of. Our differences are more like our origins, passions, nationalities, jobs, parenting styles, tastes, dreams..... And some of us actually are small-scale farmers. Or we restore furniture. Or old cars. Or volunteer. Or pilot drones. Whatever. Diversity is diversity and if you're only looking in one dimension, then you miss it.
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It's also worth noting that many real estate developments/listings use a "builder's acre" which is a 200x200 square, or 40,000 square feet. About 10% less than a full acre.
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I would think this would have included Central Park (around 850 acres) and the Island of Manhattan (around 14,000 acres) … and I wonder how many would even guess that Manhattan is less than 10% of the total area of the city?
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@DGR NYC in acres -
Boro Acres
Bronx 26,944.00
Brooklyn 45,324.80
Manhattan 14,611.20
Queens 69,459.20
SI 37,356.80
NYC 193,696.00
"Everywhere else, acres are the standard..."
"According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the size of an acre — 43,560 square feet — was originally derived from the amount of land that could be plowed in a day with a yoke of oxen pulling a wooden plow. These days, that is perhaps not the most helpful description."
a hectare is 10,000 m^2 (= 100 m x 100 m), which is the standard not frequently in the US, but everywhere else.
and do you know the square root of 43,560? do you know how to plow with a yoke of oxen? do you even know what a yoke is? do you know whose foot was the original standard for the british measurement?
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@thomas bishop
The acre is not defined in terms of square feet - it is perhaps easier to remember the actual definition, which is that there are 640 acres in one square mile.
It is true that the acre is the standard land area unit in very few countries these days. It works for me, since I grew up in the suburbs in a house on a one-acre plot.
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Wikipedia has a good entry on the meaning of an acre. The area of land that could be plowed in a day was presumed to be 66 by 660 feet, thus the number 43560. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre
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@thomas bishop well put. and thus a hectare or ha is just under 2.5 acres.
Thanks for the perspective.
Urban people have the most interesting reference points. Here in North Idaho, you can get five acres with nice views for $20,000. In the dry southern part of Idaho, an acre is valued on how many cows it can feed.
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And we should be moving out there and flip MT blue. Would change the course of history!
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I understand that this article is written for NYC dwellers.
However, the Times is read all over the world.
So, it would have been appropriate to include a comparison to hectare, the unit if measure used in most of the world.
1 hectare = 2.47 acres.
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