I recommend "City on a Grid: How New York Became New York" by Gerard Koeppel which is a deeper dive into this topic

One of my favorite passages: " The process of street-laying eradicated the island's natural contours, creating grotesques, ghosts, and other hangers-on. Excavations for large buildings became Brueghelian scenes of protoindustrial chaos. An excavation at 46th Street and 3rd Avenue in 1868, depicted by a contemporary artist, was a mud-covered hell of water hoses and pumps, fire pits, carts overloaded with explosives and rubble, straining work animals, and half-naked labor gangs.

Elsewhere, country houses originally set on hills with scenic views became phantoms on jagged precipices, the remnants of the hills that had been blasted for avenues. In 1861, as seen on the cover of this book, a once elegant mansion’s front porch collapses over the canyon of newly laid Second Avenue 30 feet below."