34 Minn. 99 | Minn. | 1885
In the year 1880, a certain tract of land, described as the N. E. J of section 32, township 29, range 23, in Ramsey county, was surveyed, laid out, and platted by the proprietor into village lots, under the name of “Hewitt’s Out-lots.” The streets therein were laid out uniformly 80 feet in width, except Central street in question, which was laid out on the easterly margin of the tract, and was only 40 feet wide. The petition in this case embraced, an application,
The question here presented is whether, where a street or alley is laid wholly on one’s own land, and is located on the margin of his tract, so,that he owns nothing beyond, (the adjoining proprietor having no interest in the fee of such street or alley,) the whole of the street opposite a lot designated as such in a deed, and bounded on the street, passes to a grantee of the original proprietor?
Where, by the terms of a deed, the land conveyed is bounded by a street or highway, the grantee takes presumptively ad filum vice as the natural boundary line between opposite proprietors; the reason of the rule being that the adjoining owners are presumed to have originally furnished the land in equal proportions for the sole purpose of a highway. Dunham v. Williams, 37 N. Y. 251; Stiles v. Curtis, 4 Day, 328; Woolrych on Ways, *5. So a deed of lots conveyed as represented in a town plat, is presumed to include a grant of the soil to the centre of the street, and it passes as parcel of the land and not as an appurtenant. Bissell v. New York Central R. Co., 23 N. Y. 61. This presumption, however, yields when a different intention is clearly manifested, or when the evidence shows there could be no foundation for it, as where the grantor at the time owned .no part of the street, the same being laid wholly on the land of another. Dunham v. Williams, supra; King’s Co. Ins. Co. v. Stevens, 87 N. Y. 287, 293, 294; 3 Kent, Comm. *434; Champlin v. Pendleton, 13 Conn. 23; Watrous v. Southworth, 5 Conn. 305; Peck v. Smith, 1 Conn. 103, 146.
In arriving at a proper construction of the effect of a deed granting lots bounded on a street, and the intention of the parties thereto in respect to the extent of the grant in the street, regard must be had
Applying these principles to an exceptional class of cases like the present, and we think it must follow that the entire street abutting the lots in question belonged to -and passed with them under the general description in the deed of the original proprietor. Taylor v. Armstrong, 24 Ark. 102. It does not differ from the case of an alley laid off by the original proprietor from the rear portion of a tier of lots next adjoining an adjacent jiroprietor. Subsequent purchasers of lots take the whole alley as part of the grant, the original owner retaining no portion of the fee.
We have not overlooked the case of Brisbine v. St. Paul & S. C. R. Co., 23 Minn. 114, 130. In that case the plaintiff owned land extending to low-water mark on the bank of the Mississippi river, in the city of St. Paul, subject to the easement of a public street laid out on the river margin thereof, and intervening between it and lots bounded thereon which he had sold, and it was held, in an action between him and the defendant corporation, which had appropriated
Judgment reversed, and cause remanded, with directions to enter judgment in accordance with this opinion.