Blog Posts by Subject: Maps, Atlases, Cartography

We've digitized more historical maps documenting the changing New York City landscape. Follow the link to a comprehensive listing of close to 2,700 maps showing buildings, old streets, farm lines, streetcar routes historical shorelines and more.

Here's a small section from G.M. Hopkins' 1880 Farm Line Atlas of Brooklyn.

Weeksville was a community of African Americans founded in 1838 by a freed slave named James Weeks in an area straddling modern day Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights in Brooklyn. By the 1860s, according to Weeksville Society, it had become a cultural nexus and a draft riot safe haven for New York City's growing African American population. While much has been written about its people, both today, as in this NY Times article from 2005 and in the past, as in The Freedman's Torchlight, one of the first African American newspapers, not all that much geographic information remains about this historical landscape. There are traces that surface today, from the Hunterfly Road Houses to 

“Cartographic materials” and “cartographic resources” are phrases that we use in the map library world to describe a whole gamut of map-like information sources. Elevation profiles and geologic sections are particular types of cartographic materials that represent vertical planes, perpendicular to the earth’s surface, in contrast to the typical horizontal-surface representations commonly referred to as maps. Here are a couple of examples from the NYPL Digital Gallery that show the added dimension that profiles can provide for an understanding of the New York City environment. Click on the images to connect to them in the Digital Gallery, where you can 

A popular collection in the NYPL's Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, and one of my personal favorites, is the county atlas series, most of which was published following the passage of a federal law commemorating the centennial of the United States.

I've always been fascinated with landscapes changing through time as seen though the lens of the map. Shorelines, especially where there are lots of waves and tides, are particularly interesting things in that they are so clearly dynamic. These fire insurance maps of Coney Island, created between 1880 and 1907 document those changes beautifully. In addition to those covering Coney Island, the NYPL has digitized close to 2000 maps at this level of detail for all five boroughs of New York City.

G.W. Bromley, Atlas of the entire City of Brooklyn, 1880, Plate 35

E. Robinson, Robinson's atlas of Kings County, New York, 1890, Plate 20

G.W. 

If you like the "Satellite View" feature in Google Maps then you should enjoy these aerial photographs of New York City. In 1924 Arthur Tuttle flew over the city snapping pictures of every building and landmark there was. His images of NYC rooftops clearly show the outline of all the buildings. The atlas containing his photos is called:

Sectional aerial maps of the City of New York / [photographed and assembled under the direction of the chief engineer, July 1st, 1924].

Here are a couple of samples cropped from larger images:

The Staten Island Ferry Terminal (from image 21A):

Sailor's Snug Harbor (from image 21B):

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There's a great selection of Staten Island maps and Atlases in the NYPL Digital Gallery. Using the "Pan and Zoom" feature the maps can be enlarged to the point where you can read street names and even the names of residents of individual houses. "Pan and Zoom" is not available on all maps, however.

Here are some of the maps and atlases available:

Atlas of Staten Island, Richmond County, New York, from official records and surveys; compiled and drawn by F. W. Beers.

Published in 1874, this Atlas contains 35 maps of neighborhoods on Staten Island including property lines, names of property owners, and outlines of individual 

Researchers who visit the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division are interested, more often than not, in our resources on New York City history. If they don’t know about them before they arrive, our readers quickly become familiar with names like Perris, Bromley, Robinson, Sanborn, and Hyde for the fire insurance and real estate maps, showing buildings block by block, that they published over the years. Without doubt, we will write more about these maps and use them to illustrate our postings about neighborhoods (e.g., Five Points) and related topics of local interest.

Here, however, because of several recent requests, we’d