Maps

Map of the city of New York with the latest improvements. By H. Phelps. W. Hooker engr. & copper-plate printer.
Entered . . . 1830 by Humphrey Phelps. [New York]

The shaded areas denote the settled parts of the city. The key lists some of the institutions, noting that there are 12 banks, 6 theaters or gardens, 4 colleges, 3 museums, 32 insurance companies, and more than 81 houses of worship of which 2 are Jewish and 4 are Roman Catholic. This map subsequently went through a number of editions in the 1830s, and some of the later editions, which presumably used the same plate, with alterations, are poor impressions.

Topographical map of the city of New York showing original water courses and made land. Prepared under the direction of Egbert L. Viele . . . Ferd. Mayer & Co. lithographers, New York [1865].
[published in The Topography and Hydrology of New York by Egbert L. Viele, New York: Robert Craighead, Printer, 1865].

This remarkable map is one of the very few 19th-century maps of the City that is heavily used today. Contractors refer to it to determine the location of underground water courses in Manhattan. Ironically, its original purpose was related to health. It was first published in the Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens’ Association of New York upon the Sanitary Condition of the City in 1865. Viele’s text accompanying the map is a plea for better drainage and wider streets. He states that “ . . . the principal cause of fever is a humid miasmatic state of the atmosphere, produced by . . . excess moisture in the ground from which poisonous exhalations arise. . . .” The connection between poor drainage and fever had been made, but the science of the time had not figured out the insect connection, among other things.

Topographical map of the cities of New York, Brooklyn, Wil-liamsburgh & Jersey City, and villages of Hoboken, Greenpoint, Astoria.
Published by M. Dripps . . . New York, 1854. Entered . . . 1853 . . .

For Manhattan, 53rd Street was as far north as the City reached in 1853 except for the villages of Yorkville, Harlem, and Manhattanville. The shaded areas represent the populated parts of the cities. The Battery was being extended to surround Castle Clinton at the foot of Manhattan. This map is probably one of the earliest to show the location of the proposed Central Park (Fifth to Eighth Avenues, 59th to 106th Streets), as well as the location of the original choice for the park, Jones’s Woods (East River to Third Avenue, 66th to 75th Streets).

Bartlett’s Illustrated map of New York City or Stranger’s guide showing the public buildings, places of amusement & its various architectural features.
New York: Designed and drawn on stone with pen and ink by G. H. Bartlett & published at his of-fice . . . 1870

An unusual “pictorial” map showing a number of prominent public and charitable/religious buildings, and many business buildings, some well known and some obscure. A 16-page “advertiser” accompanies the map, and, not surprisingly, most every business represented therein has its building illustrated on the map. This is an early example of a map prepared partly for advertising purposes. There are few pictorial maps of Manhattan (not including the “bird’s-eye view” prints) until the late 20th century.

The Dr. John A. Harriss System, American Multiple Highway [photograph of drawing of proposed multiple highway system in New York City, 1927.]

This remarkable proposal (“patent pending”– filed in 1927 and issued as #1,784,728 in 1930) indicates the concern with traffic congestion in New York by the mid-1920s. Since the elevated railroads were still in existence on several avenues at this time, and the noise and blight they created were quite obvious, it is amazing that Dr. Harriss, a visionary traffic authority who developed the New York City traffic light signal system, evidently thought that the city could bury three or more primary avenues and a number of cross streets with this road system. It appears he was inspired by “King’s Dream of New York.”