Joseph-François Mangin

[3] After working for a few years as a lawyer near Nancy, Mangin decided to move to Saint-Domingue (today known as Haiti), hoping to make a fortune.

[4] Mangin and his brother Charles had to flee Saint-Domingue in 1793 as a consequence of the slave revolt which started in 1792.

[7] Mangin was appointed to be one of the handful of official recognized "city surveyors", he was a Military Engineer during the war of 1812 the United States.

The Council accepted the Mangin–Goerck Plan as "the new Map of the City" for four years, and even published it by subscription, until political machinations perhaps organized by Aaron Burr, the political enemy of Mangin's mentor Alexander Hamilton, brought the plan into disrepute, and the Council ordered that copies which had already been sold be bought back, and that a label warning of "inaccuracies" be placed on any additional copies sold.

[12] In 1802, Mangin and John McComb Jr. entered a competition to design New York's City Hall, which they won.

Among the twenty-five entries passed over was one submitted by architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe (who would go on to be known as the "Father of American Architecture," but would never design a building in New York City).

Then in the 1890s, a descendant of McComb erased Mangin's name from the drawing they had submitted for the competition, so as to increase their value.

He was mistaken for another Joseph-François Mangin born in France around the same period, or was a slave, followed by becoming a student of one of the most prominent French architects, Ange-Jacques Gabriel.