The Map Room: Antique Maps

Antique Maps

This category includes the following subcategories, whose entries are not included below: Collecting (46 entries), Hoaxes & Controversies (20 entries), Map Thefts (111 entries).

Two More Blogs: Old-Map-Blog posts scans from the author’s collection of antique maps; so far they seem mainly to be from German-language atlas plates. GPSFix focuses on Garmin’s outdoor GPS receivers…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, July 15, 2010 at 1:53 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Blogs, GPS
Strait Through: Exhibition at Princeton University: Strait Through: Magellan to Cook and the Pacific, an exhibition from July 17, 2010, to January 2, 2011, in the main gallery of Princeton University’s Firestone Library, documents “the drama of the unfolding exploration of the Pacific Ocean that followed the discovery of the Strait of Magellan. In rare historic… Read more →; Posted on Monday, July 5, 2010 at 2:12 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
The Making of the Atlantic Neptune: We’ve heard about The Atlantic Neptune, an 18th-century multi-volume atlas of the eastern shores of North America produced by J. F. W. des Barres. Jeffrey Murray returns to the pages of Fine Books and Collections magazine (see previous entry) to explore the making of The Atlantic Neptune, including Des Barres’s… Read more →; Posted on Monday, July 5, 2010 at 8:54 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Nautical
Making a Map in 1906: Neat post from the Bartholomew Archive on the steps to print a colour map, circa 1906…. Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, June 29, 2010 at 1:58 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Mapping Portsmouth’s Tudor Past: Mapping Portsmouth’s Tudor Past is a temporary exhibition running from July 2 to October 17, 2010 at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard’s Mary Rose Museum. Mapping Portsmouth’s Tudor Past brings together, for the first time, several important maps from The British Library, UK Hydrographic Office and the Admiralty Library. All but… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 9:59 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
North Carolina Maps Update: An update on North Carolina Maps, which I first told you about in August 2008: according to this University of North Carolina Libraries item, the site’s collection now exceeds 3,200 maps: “Visitors to the North Carolina Maps site can see the results of a three-year collaborative project to identify… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, June 26, 2010 at 10:07 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century Urban Rail Transit Maps: A collection of late 19th- and early 20th-century urban rail transit maps from the University of Chicago Library’s map collection. Zoomify format; Flash required. Via MAPS-L…. Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, June 9, 2010 at 8:12 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Mass Transit
Exploring the Origins of the Portolan Chart: The Washington Post reports on a conference held last Friday at the Library of Congress: Re-Examining the Portolan Chart: History, Navigation and Science explored the mysterious origins of the portolan chart, which apparently appeared from nowhere, with no known antecedents, in the 13th century. Via MapHist…. Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 2:35 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Conferences, Nautical
British Map Roundup: Parker in the Telegraph, BBC TV Series: Mike Parker has an essay in the Telegraph that refers to the two upcoming BBC TV series and British Library exhibition; Parker’s Map Addict, which I reviewed last October, is now available in paperback. As for those two BBC series, here are the web pages for Maps: Power, Plunder and… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at 8:48 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books, Magnificent Maps
Edward Weller’s 1868 Map of London: MAPCO, which makes high-resolution scans of antique maps available online, has added a lot of material since I first blogged about them in 2007; one of their more recent additions has been showing up a lot in my Twitter feed: Edward Weller’s 1868 map of London…. Read more →; Posted on Friday, April 9, 2010 at 8:56 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, London

The Grub Street Project: The Grub Street Project: Topographies of 18th-Century London “aims to map the city and its texts to create both a historically accurate visualization of the city’s commerce and communications, and a record of how its authors and artists portrayed it.” So far it’s very much a work in progress,… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 8:58 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, London
Invented Bodies: An exhibition that opened this week at Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center has a component of interest to antique map enthusiasts. Invented Bodies: Shapely Constructs of the Early Modern runs until June 25. This exhibition explores the many ways that Europeans in the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries viewed the world,… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 8:52 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
The Independent on ‘Magnificent Maps’: The Independent has an article about the British Library’s upcoming map exhibition, Magnificent Maps, which opens April 30. The piece quotes British Library map head Peter Barber and makes reference to a number of maps without explicitly saying that they’re part of the exhibition, but I think their presence can… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, March 20, 2010 at 11:52 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Magnificent Maps
World War I Trench Maps: Fine Books and Collections magazine has published an article by Jeffrey Murray, former archivist and author of Terra Nostra, about trench maps used by British forces in World War I. In its day, the Great War was the largest survey and mapping operation undertaken in history. No previous military… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 11:52 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Military
Spacing Atlantic on Mapping Halifax: Spacing Atlantic, an urban blog covering cities in Atlantic Canada, has a series called [Re]Presenting Halifax, which looks at historical and contemporary maps and diagrams of the Halifax region. Four posts so far, including this one on Atlantic Neptune cartographer J. F. W. Des Barres and this one on a 1950s urban… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 4:14 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Cities
Time on Ricci: It’s been covered before, but see Time magazine’s coverage of the Library of Congress exhibition of Matteo Ricci’s 1602 Chinese-language map of the world. Previously: NY Times on Ricci Map Exhibition; 1602 Ricci Map Now on Display; “Impossible Black Tulip” Coming to the University of Minnesota…. Read more →; Posted on Friday, February 26, 2010 at 10:48 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Cartouches: A big blog entry from the David Rumsey Map Collection about cartouches, “the elaborate decorations that frame map titles and other information about the map,” including 50 (!) examples thereof…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 8:49 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Two Map Exhibitions in New England: Two ongoing map exhibitions in New England to tell you about: Map Talk: A Conversation with Maps at the JCB, at the John Carter Brown Library of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island until March 30. Via MapHist. Writing the Earth: 2,000 Years of Geography and Mapping, at the Bruce… Read more →; 1
Posted on Saturday, February 13, 2010 at 6:42 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Mapping Missouri Opens in Kansas City: Mapping Missouri: Maps from the Collection of the Missouri State Archives opens today at the National Archives Central Plains Region headquarters in Kansas City. “Drawing from diverse examples such as land survey maps made by Antoine Soulard from 1796-1806 and computer generated census maps made in the year 2000,… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 5:45 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Leventhal Does RSS, Flickr: Via MapHist, I learn that the Boston Public Library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map Center has a newish RSS feed. It also has a Flickr account, though that’s been up and running for some time…. Read more →; Posted on Friday, February 5, 2010 at 12:54 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Libraries
Envisioning the World: A travelling exhibition of early printed maps, Envisioning the World: The First Printed Maps, 1472-1700, comes to the Princeton University Library on February 7, and runs until August 1. Through the language of cartography, the maps in the exhibition illustrate the way in which scientists, mathematicians, explorers and cartographers came… Read more →; Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 at 7:33 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
British Library to Hold Map Exhibition, BBC to Air Two Map Series: This will be a busy spring for maps at the BBC, which has announced that BBC Four will run two television series on maps: a three-part, one-hour series called Mapping the World and a four-part, one-hour series called The Art of Maps. This, on top of a BBC Radio 4… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 10:03 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Magnificent Maps
New Exhibition: Writing the Earth: Writing the Earth: 2,000 Years of Geography and Mapping opens on Saturday, January 30 at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut and runs until May 2. ArtDaily: “The exhibition features a selection of world maps that were printed between 1511 and 1800 and are on loan from a private collection…. Read more →; Posted on Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 4:06 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
NY Times on Ricci Map Exhibition: The New York Times has a review of the Library of Congress’s exhibition of Matteo Ricci’s 1602 Chinese-language map of the world, which, it turns out, is being displayed across from the Library’s copy of Martin Waldseemüller’s map. (Seems appropriate.) Edward Rothstein’s article also goes into considerable detail about the… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 1:45 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
1602 Ricci Map Now on Display: A copy of Matteo Ricci’s Impossible Black Tulip — a rare 1602 Chinese-language map of the world — is now on display at the Library of Congress. It’ll be there until April 10; after that, it will move to its new permanent home at the University of Minnesota’s James Ford… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 8:28 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
‘Impossible Black Tulip’ Coming to the University of Minnesota: Few copies exist of Matteo Ricci’s “Impossible Black Tulip” of 1602, the first map of the world in Chinese to show the Americas (no, stop right there), but the James Ford Bell Trust has acquired one for the University of Minnesota, paying a London map dealer $1 million. Before moving… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, December 20, 2009 at 8:23 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
David Rumsey Website Updated, Blog Added: The website of the David Rumsey Map Collection has been given its first redesign in its 10-year history. That redesign, by the way, includes a new blog. Via Maps-L; thanks also to peacay for the tip…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, December 14, 2009 at 3:30 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Blogs
Review: The Fourth Part of the World: The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name by Toby Lester Free Press, 2009. Hardcover, 480 pp. ISBN 978-1-4165-3531-7 We’ve heard a lot about Martin Waldseemüller’s map in recent years. Printed in… Read more →; Posted on Monday, December 7, 2009 at 8:44 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Book Reviews
1858 Map of Cape Cod Republished as Book: Henry Walling’s five-foot-square “Map of the Counties of Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket, Massachusetts,” produced in 1858, is now available as a hardcover book, the Cape Cod Times reports: “The new book’s maps were shot digitally by Truro photographer Charles Fields, turning each section of the map into a 12-inch-by-12-inch… Read more →; Posted on Monday, November 30, 2009 at 8:31 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books
The Scotsman on the NLS Map Collection: “You could lose yourself in here,” says The Scotsman’s Peter Ross, in his expansive piece about the National Library of Scotland’s map collection. Via MapHist…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, November 23, 2009 at 8:16 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Libraries
Manitoba Historical Maps: I grew up in Winnipeg, so I was thrilled to discover the thousand-plus maps of Winnipeg, Brandon and the rest of Manitoba posted on the Manitoba Historical Maps Flickr account. The maps include old city maps, transit maps, insurance maps, planning maps, topo maps, highway maps — some of… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 2:10 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Cities, Roads
Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-2009: Vanity Fair points to Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-2009, an exhibition at the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwartzman building that runs until June 26, 2010 (exhibition details here). Drawing on The New York Public Library’s collection of Dutch, English, French, and American mapping of the Atlantic coastal… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 1:03 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Another Look at the Linda Hall Library’s Celestial Atlases: The Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology in Kansas City, Missouri gets a mention in the travel section of the New York Times (in an article on rare book collections that are accessible to the public) for its collection of celestial atlases. Via MapHist. On past exhibitions of… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, November 14, 2009 at 11:23 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy, Libraries
Sanborn Maps at the Library of Congress: The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Online Checklist is the Library of Congress’s online, continuously updated version of its 1981 publication, Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress. The searchable database provides listings of the 50,000 editions of Sanborn Maps held by the Library, with links to images as they… Read more →; Posted on Monday, November 2, 2009 at 8:27 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
The Fourth Part of the World: I had thought that all the books about Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 map of the world — you know, the one that first named “America” — would have come and gone with the 2007 quincentennial of the map, but I’d forgotten about Toby Lester’s book, The Fourth Part of the… Read more →; Posted on Monday, October 26, 2009 at 3:29 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books, Talks & Presentations
The Katip Çelebi Ottoman Map and Cultural Exhibition: An exhibition of 16th- and 17th-century Ottoman maps is taking place right now at Cal State San Bernadino’s Anthropology Museum. The Katip Çelebi Ottoman Map and Cultural Exhibition features cartographic works by Çelebi and Piri Reis (whom you may have heard of), and runs until October 31. The touring exhibition… Read more →; Posted on Monday, October 26, 2009 at 11:18 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Early Irish Maps: Britain’s National Archives has launched a collection of early modern maps of Ireland; the more than 60 maps date from the late 16th to early 17th century, a period during which England was colonizing Ireland. “Attractive and colourful, these maps include the famous 1567 map of Hibernia by John… Read more →; Posted on Friday, October 16, 2009 at 7:21 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Three Exhibitions: An exhibition of Jedediah Hotchkiss’s Civil War maps is currently underway at the Library of Congress — in the corridor outside the Geography and Maps Reading Room at the James Madison Building, but it’s an exhibition nonetheless. Via MapHist. Running until September 26 at the Danish Royal Library, an… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 8:46 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Two 17th-Century Atlases Rediscovered in Oxford Library: Times Higher Education has the fascinating story about how two rare 17th-century Portuguese atlases came to be found in the bowels of the library of the Queen’s College, Oxford…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, August 31, 2009 at 9:16 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Libraries
1859 Map Falling Apart, Costs Too Much to Restore: An 1859 map of the Michigan counties of Genesee and Shiawassee in the possession of the Swartz Creek Area Historical Society is falling apart, and the society is wondering whether it’s worth spending the $3,000 to $5,000 it will cost to restore it, the Flint Journal reports: “‘I really don’t… Read more →; Posted on Monday, August 31, 2009 at 9:07 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
BibliOdyssey: Puzzle and Game Maps: BibliOdyssey had another fine post earlier this week, this one collecting items that “share the common characteristics of being a jigsaw puzzle or board game incorporating a map, and being produced before 1900.” (It’s probably worth mentioning that Risk only came out in 1957.)… Read more →; Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009 at 6:30 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Quest: Trail Maps of the West: Quest: Trail Maps of the West, an exhibition of maps on loan from members of the Rocky Mountain Map Society taking place until October 4 at the Loveland Museum and Gallery in Loveland, Colorado (just south of Fort Collins), “features a collection of authentic migration trail maps that date from… Read more →; Posted on Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:29 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Engraved Rock Is 14,000-Year-Old Map: Researchers: Spanish researchers claim that etchings made 14,000 years ago on a hand-sized stone represent a prehistoric hunting map: Journal of Human Evolution abstract, New Scientist, Daily Mail. From the New Scientist: Above recognisable depictions of reindeer, a stag and some ibex are what Utrilla’s team believe is a representation of… Read more →; 1
Posted on Friday, August 7, 2009 at 8:39 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works: An upcoming exhibition at the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center, Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works commemorates the International Year of Astronomy by “showcasing items from the center’s science collection that survey some of the most important astronomical discoveries of the last 500 years.” By no means… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, August 1, 2009 at 11:56 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy, Exhibitions
Imperial Japanese Army Maps of the Asia-Pacific Region: A collection of maps from the Imperial Japanese Army archives is now online. Dating from the 1880s onward, the maps cover the Asia-Pacific region, and represent the IJA’s interest in mapping the entire region. “Until the end of World War II, the Japanese military created, copied and stole maps of… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, July 7, 2009 at 9:23 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Divine Sky: The Artistry of Astronomical Maps: Divine Sky: The Artistry of Astronomical Maps is a small online exhibition featuring a selection of celestial maps from the library holdings of the University of Michigan. Divine Sky focuses on the fertile period between 1600 and 1900 that produced some of astronomy’s greatest treasures. This astronomical Golden Age… Read more →; Posted on Monday, June 29, 2009 at 8:47 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy
Georeferenced Old Maps on the iPhone: All Points Blog points to a forthcoming iPhone/iPod touch application called Old Map App, which, the developers say, “displays layers of geo-referenced historical maps projected onto a modern coordinate system, so that the same location can be compared over time. Layers can be faded, adjusted, and explored freely. If the… Read more →; 1
Posted on Sunday, June 28, 2009 at 5:09 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Mobile Devices
Dunhuang Star Chart: Yesterday’s Astronomy Picture of the Day featured a portion of the Dunhuang Star Chart, “one of the most impressive documents in the history of astronomy.” A four-metre scroll dating from the seventh century Tang Dynasty, it’s apparently the first representation of Chinese astronomy. More on the chart from Nature,… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, June 20, 2009 at 7:59 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy
The Map Collector: Articles from The Map Collector, a quarterly magazine published between 1977 and 1996, are being reprinted on Kuntspedia. About 30 or so articles so far; I don’t know where to begin. Via MapHist…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, June 15, 2009 at 2:12 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Collecting, History of Cartography
Early Views of Hong Kong: “Early Views of Hong Kong, 1842-1946” is an exhibition of maps of pictures and maps of Hong Kong from Wattis Fine Art in Hong Kong, including this 1866 bilingual (English-Chinese) map of Hong Kong (pictured at right), which sold for HK$360,000 just before the exhibit opened on May 8…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, May 25, 2009 at 6:52 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Geographicus: Kevin Brown of Geographicus writes, “I am a generalist antique map dealer specializing in rare maps from the 15th through the 19th centuries. As a sideline I have also started a map blog on cartographic anomalies, current map-related events, and the antique map trade. … We also sponsor the Geographicus… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 3:11 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Blogs, Collecting
Old Japanese Maps Stir Old Japanese Controversy: Old maps of Japan from David Rumsey’s collection that are viewable as a layer in Google Earth have gotten Google into a bit of hot water in Japan, the AP’s Jay Alabaster reports (Huffington Post, Japan Times, Washington Post). The maps show the locations of buraku villages, marked with a… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at 3:07 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Censorship, Security & Privacy, Google Earth
A to Z Map of London, 1936: Phyllis Pearsall’s famous 1936 map of London is available again. The company she founded, A to Z Maps, has published a fascimile reproduction of her map, coloured to simulate aging (the original was black ink on white paper, but would not look that way now after 73 years). They’ve… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 4:15 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, London
The Bartholomew Archive: The Bartholomew Archive at the National Library of Scotland contains the business records, publications, working maps and printing plates of John Bartholomew & Son Ltd., the Edinburgh mapmaking firm. The Archive is still a work in progress: the Library is still receiving papers from the family of John Bartholomew, who… Read more →; Posted on Monday, April 20, 2009 at 7:45 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Blogs, Libraries
MacDonald Gill’s Wonderground Map: In an article posted on the ABAA’s Web site, Elisabeth Burdon of oldimprints.com argues that MacDonald Gill, the artist responsible for the 1913 Wonderground Map of London Town, had a “profound” influence on later pictorial mapmaking. “Not only did Gill’s map spawn a clearly identifiable genre that was to… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 4:20 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Art, London
Old Road Atlases of Pennsylvania: The most recent addition to Harold Cramer’s Historical Maps of Pennsylvania site (which looks massive) is a collection of old road atlases dating from 1889 to 1930. (At right, an example from 1892.) Via MapHist…. Read more →; Posted on Sunday, April 5, 2009 at 7:59 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Roads
Tabula Peutingeriana: Olivier Ruellet blogs about the Tabula Peutingeriana (in French), which is as good an excuse as any to revisit this unusual medieval artifact. Inherited by Konrad Peutinger in 1508, the Tabula was a medieval copy of a fourth- or fifth-century map of the Roman road network. Calling it a… Read more →; Posted on Friday, April 3, 2009 at 12:01 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
CSAA Donates 7,000 Maps to Stanford: The California State Automobile Association has donated 7,000 old road maps to Stanford University’s Branner Earth Sciences Library and Map Collections; the donation was triggered by the CSAA’s move to new headquarters with less space. “Along with the road maps, the AAA donation includes thousands of linen maps, topographic maps… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 2:21 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Libraries, Roads
Mapping Texas and the New World: Mapping Texas and the New World opens Thursday at the Mason Square Museum in Mason, Texas. Includes early cartography of the New World generally and maps of Texas specifically, covering the period from Mexican independence through the early 20th century…. Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 9:12 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Historic Map Works: Historic Map Works is building a business offering cadastral and other antique maps online; from their collection of 1.2 million maps, most of which were obtained by buying the companies who published them, more than half a million have been put online so far. It’s freely browsable, but it’s not… Read more →; Posted on Friday, February 27, 2009 at 3:20 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Rumsey Donates Maps to Stanford: David Rumsey — he of the eponymous website — is donating his entire collection of 150,000 maps, plus digital copies, to Stanford University. Just not all at once: “While Rumsey’s agreement with Stanford calls for his entire collection to be donated, details of when certain maps will be given to… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, February 4, 2009 at 7:31 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Libraries
Shenandoah Valley Mapmaker: At the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester, Virginia until May 10, 2009, Jed Hotchkiss: Shenandoah Valley Mapmaker, a collection of Civil War maps by the Confederate Army’s mapmaker. The amazing maps of Jedediah Hotchkiss helped Confederate officers plan military strategies. With their remarkable accuracy and detail, these… Read more →; Posted on Monday, February 2, 2009 at 7:12 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Waldseemüller Symposium at LOC in May: “Exploring Waldseemüller’s World” is a two-day symposium to be held at the Library of Congress on May 14 and 15, 2009. According to the press release, it will “examine Martin Waldseemüller’s cartographic vision and address the complex historical and philosophical questions raised by the publication of the 1507 map.”… Read more →; Posted on Friday, January 30, 2009 at 9:23 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Conferences, Fiction About Maps
Denver Post on ‘On High’: The Denver Post’s John Meyer reviews the On High: Cartography of Topography exhibition in Golden, Colorado: “if you’re a mountaineer or a map lover, don’t miss it.”… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 8:59 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
The Mapmakers’ Art: Exhibition in Myrtle Beach: The Mapmakers’ Art: The Bishop Collection of Antique Maps, 1608-1863 is an exhibition running at the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, until March 20. “The collection of 15 maps, donated to the museum in 1999, reflects a centuries-ago golden age of cartography, when… Read more →; Posted on Friday, January 23, 2009 at 2:14 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
On High: Cartography of Topography: At the Bradford Washburn American Mountaineering Museum in Golden, Colorado from January 23 to May 31, an exhibition called On High: Cartography of Topography: The exhibition will explore the ways in which topography has been viewed and mapped throughout history. Though not a comprehensive history of mountain cartography, On High… Read more →; Posted on Friday, January 16, 2009 at 8:32 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Thomas Harriot: First to Map the Moon?: Englishman Thomas Harriot may have beaten Galileo to the punch. According to an article in February’s Astronomy and Geophysics, Harriot may have been the first known person to observe the Moon through a telescope — and, more importantly for us — the first to draw maps of what he saw…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, January 15, 2009 at 1:03 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy
Japan Map Exhibition in Munich: At the Gemini Gallery in Munich until December 31, an exhibition called Maps of Japan — Japan on Maps: Benedetto Bordone published the earliest known printed map devoted to Japan worldwide 1528 in Venice based solely on the mention by Marco Polo. Only when Portuguese and later also Dutch seafarers… Read more →; Posted on Friday, December 5, 2008 at 6:49 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Even More Caricature Maps: Also via MapHist, collections of caricature maps from a couple of libraries. The Library of Congress has scans of William Harvey’s Geographical Fun, circa 1868 (at right, from that book, Scotland). And a search of the University of Amsterdam Library’s map collection reveals a number of examples of the… Read more →; Posted on Monday, December 1, 2008 at 1:19 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
World War II Escape Maps: Over the past few months there has been some discussion on MapHist about “escape maps” — maps handed out to Allied pilots and air crews during World War II, printed on fabric (cloth, silk or rayon) and intended to be hid on their person in case of capture, to… Read more →; 2
Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 6:20 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
The Washington Post on Waldseemüller: An article in today’s Washington Post looks at the mystery about where the information found in Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 map — the first one to label the New World as “America” — came from, and interviews John Hessler, author of a recent book on the subject, The Naming of… Read more →; Posted on Monday, November 17, 2008 at 6:38 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books
Vladimiro Valerio’s Maps and Atlases: Vladimiro Valerio has been scanning his map collection and uploading them to his Maps and Images site. Ten atlases and four single-sheet maps, a total of 280 images, are available so far. They range from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries; all are Italian, most are from Naples. Via… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, November 4, 2008 at 3:57 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
E. G. R. Taylor Collection: Via MapHist, an announcement that the E. G. R. Taylor Collection of Historic Printed Maps has been catalogued and is now available for consultation in the Special Collections Reading Room of the University of London’s Senate House Library. The Taylor Collection comprises 900 map sheets from the eighteenth and nineteenth… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, September 14, 2008 at 10:11 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Nevada in Maps: Nevada in Maps is a nice collection of more than 4,000 maps and atlases from the collections of the University of Nevada at Reno and Las Vegas, the State Library, and the Nevada State Historical Society. The collections mostly date from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries, and include… Read more →; Posted on Friday, August 29, 2008 at 10:32 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
North Carolina Maps: North Carolina Maps digitizes old maps of North Carolina; in beta (who are they, Google?) for the moment, but plans call for more than 1,500 maps, ranging from the 1590s to the 1960s. It’s a collaboration between the North Carolina State Archives, the North Carolina Collection at UNC Chapel… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 11:33 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
A Book Roundup: David Lanegran’s Minnesota on the Map: A Historical Atlas “brings together for the first time stunning but rarely seen maps of Minnesota through five centuries”; the Rochester, Minnesota Post-Bulletin has more: “The maps include early city plans of Rochester, Red Wing, Preston, Wasioja and the lost town of Beaver… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 8:14 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books, Google Earth
Tampa Bay History Center to Receive Collection of Florida Maps: The Tampa Bay History Center opens in December; over the next few years, maps from a private collection of some 2,000 maps of Florida, collected over 25 years by investment firm president J. Thomas Touchton, will be transferred to the Center’s holdings. Last March, the Tampa Tribune ran a piece… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, August 7, 2008 at 8:11 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
A Map Exhibition in Arkansas: Maps: From Here to There and Then to Now is a map exhibition, running from August 10 to November 30, at the Old Independence Regional Museum in Batesville, Arkansas. The Searcy, Arkansas Daily Citizen has more: Of special interest is an exhibition of Carter Yeatman’s Historic Arkansas map collection, which… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 9:42 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
More Caricature Maps from World War I: BibliOdyssey has another collection of satirical caricature maps from the First World War, from British, Dutch and German sources. Previously: A Japanese Caricature Map of the World…. Read more →; Posted on Sunday, August 3, 2008 at 2:46 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Map of Canada’s North Found: Maps of the arctic seem to be lost more often lately than found, but a century-old map of the Canadian arctic by Joseph-Elzéar Bernier was recently rediscovered by Quebec archivists, the Montreal Gazette reports; the article doesn’t mention where Bernier’s map had run off to. Via GeoCarta. Previously: Map of… Read more →; Posted on Friday, August 1, 2008 at 2:49 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Revisualizing Westward Expansion: At the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, until October 12, Revisualizing Westward Expansion: A Century of Conflict, 1800–1900, an exhibition of maps from UTA’s Virginia Garrett Cartographic History Library: “[T]he maps in this exhibition span the century, from Aaron Arrowsmith’s great 1796 map of the United States… Read more →; 1
Posted on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 4:02 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Atlas Maior Exhibition: An exhibition of Joan Blaeu’s Atlas Maior and other maps held at the University of Amsterdam Library’s Special Collections — and they appear to have quite the Blaeu collection — along with maps by his contemporaries, is now underway and runs until November 23. (The page is in Dutch; at… Read more →; Posted on Monday, July 14, 2008 at 9:45 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Vasi’s Grand Tour of Rome: The University of Oregon team that brought us the Nolli Map of Rome has something new for us: Imago Urbis: Giuseppe Vasi’s Grand Tour of Rome, which links Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 map of Rome with Vasi’s contemporary etchings of Rome’s architectural landscape. The interface blends the two artists’ work:… Read more →; Posted on Monday, July 14, 2008 at 9:21 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Rome
De Wit Maps Digitally Restored: Five maps by Frederick de Wit (1630-1706) have been digitally restored: rather than trying to restore the badly damaged originals, the maps were instead digitized and the digital copies were then manipulated. Missing parts were spliced in from other editions where appropriate, for example. A popup viewer allows a… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, July 9, 2008 at 10:20 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
A Japanese Caricature Map of the World: BibliOdyssey provides another example of what I suppose is called a caricature map: these are maps where representative caricatures are twisted into the shapes of the countries they are meant to represent. This one comes from Japan circa 1914. In this entry, peacay also provides links to earlier posts… Read more →; 1
Posted on Sunday, May 25, 2008 at 10:41 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
County Atlases: In the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Illinois, Diane Dretske writes an essay in praise of county atlases: County atlases were certainly a marketing tool to sell books, but they occurred at just the right time in American history when farms and small communities were beginning to prosper. The atlas… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 3:07 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Cartographic Chronograms: Our friend Tony Campbell has put together a Web page on cartographic chronograms. But what, you may ask, is a chronogram? In a nutshell, it’s a date encrypted into a sentence or inscription. Tony’s short explanation suffices very well: A chronogram is a sentence or inscription in which specific letters… Read more →; Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 1:31 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
250 Years of Pittsburgh Maps: A collection of maps of Pittsburgh on the occasion of that city’s 250th anniversary. “This selection of maps and views presents a history of the city and region from [1758] to near the present; some can be seen on other pages of this website. There are few earlier large… Read more →; Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 11:43 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Pittsburgh
Schiaparelli’s Maps of Mars: Until Mariner 4 photographed craters on Mars in 1965, Earth-bound telescopes were the only way to map the red planet. BibliOdyssey looks at Schiaparelli’s 19th-century maps of Mars, which gave rise to the idea that canals — canali or channels in Italian — criscrossed the Martian surface. It was… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 7:28 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy
Chicago and Latin America: More maps from the University of Chicago Map Collection have been posted to the Web: Before and After the Fire: Chicago in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century Latin American Cities Via MAPS-L. Previously: Chicago Maps…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, March 31, 2008 at 8:34 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Chicago
Blaeu Notes: A digitized version of Willem and Joan Blaeu’s six-volume Toonneel des Aerdrycks, ofte Nieuwe Atlas (1659), produced for the city of Leiden, is available online from the Leiden Regional Archives; click here for the map viewer. Christie’s is auctioning two of Willem Blaeu’s globes — one terrestrial, one celestial. They’re… Read more →; Posted on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 6:48 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Collecting, Globes
Topographic Map Symbols: Topographic map symbols for historic topographic maps: “Presented here is a collection of symbols used on USGS Topographic Maps printed from the late 1890s. The styles of the symbols have changed dramatically since this time, and the beginning of their history is illustrated here. We refer to sheets in this… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 1:37 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Cartography, Topo Maps & Trails
Rumsey Collection in Second Life: I have no direct experience with Second Life, but the David Rumsey Map Collection is setting up a presence there. This long blog entry on Not Possible IRL has all the details. The screenshots make it look quite evocative and quite immersive. Via MapHist. Previously: Google Earth Roundup: Automator,… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 10:26 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Daily Maps: National Geographic’s Map of the Day site provides (in a vein similar to that of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, which it is strongly reminiscent of) a map along with a brief description every weekday (more or less). Maps may be from National Geographic’s stock or an old map… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 8:55 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Blogs
The Gough Map Book Published: The 14th-century Gough Map, the oldest surviving map of Great Britain, is getting renewed attention with the publication of Nick Millea’s study, which, Tony Campbell says, “is the first study for fifty years of this highly important map.” To demonstrate the Gough Map’s accuracy, the book georectifies the map… Read more →; Posted on Friday, February 1, 2008 at 7:07 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books
Schwartz Collection Exhibition Opens Monday: Seymour I. Schwartz, author of five books on the history of cartography,* is pledging his collection to the University of Virginia, which, in turn, is naming its map room in his honour today. About 50 of those 225 maps go on display on Monday; the exhibition will run through… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, January 26, 2008 at 4:44 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions, History of Cartography
Boston-Area Map Exhibitions: At the Boston Public Library’s Copley Square through June, Boston and Beyond, a collection of bird’s-eye-view maps of Boston and New England from the second half of the 19th century. At Harvard University’s Pusey Library until April 1, Henry F. Walling and the Elevation of American Mapmaking. Walling (1825-1888) “was… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, January 26, 2008 at 4:14 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Boston, Earth Sciences, Exhibitions, Globes, Surveying
The Sheldon Tapestry: The Sheldon Tapestry Map of Gloucestershire is on display at Oxford’s Bodleian Library until February 23; the Library acquired the 16th-century tapestry at auction last year for more than £100,000. “The wool and silk tapestry … is part of a set of four maps commissioned by Ralph Sheldon for his… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 3:42 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Manhattan’s Map Room: The New York Post has an item on the Map Room (no relation) of the Borough of Manhattan’s Topographic Bureau, which is responsible for the official maps of New York County (largely defunct and contiguous with Manhattan) since 1748; last week a call was put out for help in preserving… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, January 19, 2008 at 5:54 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Which Waldseemüller?: Which Waldseemüller map is “America’s birth certificate” (i.e., the first map to label the New World as “America”)? Is it the one the last copy of which is now on display at the Library of Congress? Or, as the Providence Journal suggests (mirror), is it another Waldseemüller map acquired… Read more →; Posted on Friday, January 18, 2008 at 8:07 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Maps of Vienna: Maps of Vienna from the city’s government. The city’s architectural, archeological, artistic and cultural history is presented through a map-based interface (which unfortunately does not work in Safari). Clicking on points of interest brings up incredibly detailed information: the map is a front-end to a massive cadastral database. The… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 7:54 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Cities
Waldseemüller Map Exhibit Opens Thursday: The long-anticipated exhibit of Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map — you know, the first one to name the New World “America” — opens this Thursday at the Library of Congress. The sole surviving copy of Waldseemüller’s map, which has been in the Library of Congress’s possession since 2003, when… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, December 9, 2007 at 5:20 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Tabula Peutingeriana: One Day Only: Nearly seven metres long and only 34 centimetres wide, the Tabula Peutingeriana is a 13th-century monk’s copy of a much older map of the Roman road network. This fascinating map stretches from Portugal to India — and stretch is the operative word here, with the distortion inherent in such… Read more →; Posted on Monday, December 3, 2007 at 8:51 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Mapping the History of the New York Subway: An animated map depicting the history of the New York subway: “[a]n animated GIF starts with a blank subway map and draws each line in the sequence in which it was built.” For more maps showing the history of New York’s subway, see this page of antique maps at nycsubway.org… Read more →; Posted on Monday, September 24, 2007 at 8:42 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Historical Maps, Mass Transit, New York
Company Makes Fire Insurance Maps Available to Researchers: I’m very keen on old fire insurance maps, so this story from the Kitchener-Waterloo Record (no idea how long it’ll be available online) made me smile. Gore Mutual, a Cambridge, Ontario insurance company, has gone to its vaults to reveal “a century’s worth of maps, documents, photographs, newspapers and letters,”… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, September 1, 2007 at 11:08 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Toronto Harbour, 1818: Last Wednesday’s Toronto Star had a brief item about an 1818 map of Toronto harbour, with lots of detail about the map itself and how it came into the current owner’s possession. Via Map the Universe…. Read more →; Posted on Sunday, July 22, 2007 at 7:19 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Toronto
Vermont’s Ancient Roads: Roger Hart did a better job of covering the issue of Vermont’s ancient and abandoned roads on GeoCarta — which is to say that he covered them and I didn’t: see here and here. In a nutshell, there are apparently a large number of roads and rights of way that… Read more →; Posted on Friday, July 20, 2007 at 1:25 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Surveying
Upcoming Books on Waldseemüller: On MapHist, John Hessler writes: Two new books on Waldseemüller and the context of the creation of the 1507 and 1516 world maps are due to be released in the next few months. The first, by Seymour Schwartz (an author whose work you all know), Putting “America” on the… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, July 4, 2007 at 1:15 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books
Hollar as a Mapmaker: A new display beginning July 20 in the Maps Reading Room lobby at the British Library: Hollar as a Mapmaker. “The display celebrates the 400th anniversary of the birth of the Czech artist and etcher Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677). Best known for his landscapes, portraits, fashion plates and depictions of antiquities,… Read more →; 1
Posted on Wednesday, July 4, 2007 at 12:22 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
The Cantino Planisphere: Timothy Thomas writes: There are no good, hi-res images of the 1502 Cantino Planisphere — one of the earliest maps from the age of discovery. This object is included in the current exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC. The exhibition website includes a flash image of… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 8:03 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
A Map Exhibitions Roundup: Zoom (June 30 to August 18, Santa Monica, California). A group exhibition of map art at Santa Monica Art Studios’ Arena 1. “Working in the USA, Britain and Australia, all 19 artists in the show employ maps as resource material, not as an exploration of actual geography or the time/space… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 4:14 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Art, Exhibitions
More About Waldseemüller: More on Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map, the 500th anniversary of which is being celebrated this year. The Library of Congress reports that construction of the hermetically sealed encasement for their copy of the map — the last surviving copy of the map (rather than the globe gores) —… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 9:16 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Globes
Candidates for the World’s Oldest Map: An article from The American Surveyor that discusses the candidates for the world’s oldest map — and, interestingly, the criteria involved: what makes a map a map and not a painting, for example. The Soleto Map and the Papyrus of Artemidorus, which we’ve encountered before, are in the running; wall… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, May 30, 2007 at 4:32 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Angling in Troubled Waters: Catholicgauze calls this map — “Angling in Troubled Waters,” an 1899 map by Fred W. Rose — “one of the best historical maps I have ever seen.” The map, which apparently is reprinted in New Worlds: Maps from the Age of Discovery, crams historical figures into the territories of… Read more →; 2
Posted on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 10:58 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Waldseemüller Map Formally Transferred: This is a couple of weeks old, but I’m that far behind. The U.S. Library of Congress has been in possession of Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map — you know, the first map with the name “America” on it — since 2003, but because it’s on the list of… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 10:30 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Podcasts & Audio
The Roy Military Survey of Scotland: William Roy’s Military Survey of Scotland was undertaken between 1747 and 1755, in the wake of the Jacobite Rebellion, which revealed a military need for a decent survey of the country. The originals are in the hands of the British Library, but a digital version is now being made… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, May 10, 2007 at 2:04 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Maps of Paris, 1716-1887: A collection of maps of Paris for an art history course, scanned from slides (so they could be a little sharper; 8-bit only). The maps date from 1716 to 1887. Via Plep…. Read more →; Posted on Saturday, April 28, 2007 at 10:14 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Paris
Philip Burden and The Mapping of North America: British map dealer Philip Burden — his company is Clive A. Burden Ltd., named for his late father — is in the U.S. on a book tour; the second volume of his massive (and expensive!) bibliographic reference, The Mapping of North America, is now out (volume one was published in… Read more →; Posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 at 10:35 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books, Dealers & Stores
The Book of Curiosities: The Book of Curiosities, an 11th-century Egyptian manuscript now scanned and available online at the Bodleian Library’s web site, contains, among other things, the first rectangular map of the world as well as many other maps of the region. In June 2002, the Bodleian Library acquired a unique manuscript… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 at 1:39 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Another David Rumsey Collection Update: Time again to report that another thousand or so maps have been added to the David Rumsey map collection. Highlights include 19th-century U.S. statistical atlases and a magnificent 1929 Italian world atlas. Via MapHist. The collection is usually updated like this once or twice a year, and was last updated… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, April 12, 2007 at 11:13 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Maps of Austria-Hungary and Central Europe circa 1910: This Hungarian site has a large collection of maps from the Third Military Mapping Survey of Austria-Hungary. The maps, which were published around 1910, are at 1:200,000 scale; they cover much of central and eastern Europe, not just the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There are 267 sheets, each scanned in high… Read more →; Posted on Monday, April 9, 2007 at 7:12 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Mapping African Exploration: At Princeton University Library’s Department of Rare Books and Special Collections from April 15 to October 21, an exhibition of African maps called To the Mountains of the Moon: Mapping African Exploration, 1541-1880: The library exhibition will feature some of the most historically significant maps of Africa by major… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, April 5, 2007 at 12:57 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Interest in Old Maps Surges in Japan: Yahoo Japan’s “Tokyo Tours With Old Maps” feature, which launched in January, has apparently kindled an interest in antique maps in Japan, The Japan Times reports. Not only is Yahoo’s site — not that I can read Japanese, but does anyone have a URL? — more popular than expected, but… Read more →; 2
Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 at 9:18 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Online Maps
North by Northeast: Five Centuries of New England Maps: North by Northeast: Five Centuries of New England Maps is an exhibition running from March 31 to August 12 at the Flynt Center of Early New England Life in Historic Deerfield. “In addition to approximately 50 printed and manuscript maps, ‘North by Northeast’ will also offer portraits, surveyors’ compasses,… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 9:32 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Jigsaw Maps: A cabinet of jigsaw maps used to teach geography to the children of George III is now on public display, the Daily Telegraph reports. The cabinet and its contents were bought in 2000 and would have been exported to the U.S., but the British government put a temporary ban on… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 9:58 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Map Course at the London Rare Books School: If you have four days in July and £500, there’s a course called A History of Maps and Map-making being offered by the University of London’s Institute of English Studies as part of the new London Rare Books School, which looks like one of those expensive summer school things that… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 at 7:27 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Education
Wisconsin and Great Lakes Map Exhibition: On display at the University of Wisconsin’s Memorial Library until June 29, Making Maps, Making History: 300 Years of Original Maps from Wisconsin and the Great Lakes Region: The exhibit features an illustrated, hand-colored map of North America made in 1670, one of the first maps to show all five… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 1:14 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Author Reinterprets Maps, Claims Portuguese Discovered Australia: A new book claims that a Portuguese fleet discovered Australia in 1522, nearly 250 years before Captain Cook arrived at Botany Bay: Reuters, Daily Telegraph. The claim, by author Peter Trickett, is based on a reinterpretation of a 16th-century French atlas which, he says, was based on a misreading… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 10:54 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Chicago Maps: A collection of 18 maps of Chicago, dating from 1900 to 1914 and showing everything from railroads to school districts, from the University of Chicago Library, in Zoomify format. This is one of several such collections from the U of C: see also Chicago in the 1890s, Social Science… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 9:33 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Chicago
Rediscovered Maps at Brown University: An exhibit at Brown University’s John Hay Library opens on Monday and runs until April 25: it features some of more than one thousand maps “rediscovered” in that library. The collection represents the world throughout the time these maps were collected by Brown University. Two-thirds of the maps are… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 8:52 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
The Evolution of Michigan Road Maps: Footpaths to Freeways: The Evolution of Michigan Road Maps is an exhibition now on display (until June) on the fourth floor of the west wing of Michigan State University’s Main Library; if you can’t visit, there is this online version. It starts surprisingly early, in 1809, with one of… Read more →; 1
Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 8:27 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions, Roads
San Francisco Fire Insurance Maps: Alberto has uploaded a collection of microfilm copies of San Francisco fire insurance maps dating from around 1905 — which wuld have been just before things got very interesting indeed from a fire perspective. The trouble with microform copies of fire insurance maps (apart from the inherently low quality… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 9:04 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, San Francisco
Afriterra: Afriterra is an online collection of digitized maps — 500 have been done so far out of a planned thousand in the current funding round, with a total of 5,000 maps in the collection, dating from the 15th century to 1900. Maps are available via the usual Zoomify Flash… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 9:49 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
1563 Nautical Atlas Discovered in Czech Library: Czech historians working in the research library in the city of Olomouc stumbled across a copy of a 1563 nautical atlas — only the sixth known to exist — by the Catalan cartographer Jaume Olives, Radio Praha reports. The story of how it arrived in Olomouc is a story… Read more →; 1
Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 9:37 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Nautical
Ancient Map, Modern Mine: This pregnant news item just begs for more detail: an Australian gold exploration company is embarking on a $216-million mining project in Egypt that was explored based on a 3,000-year-old pharaonic map that indicated locations of gold sites. Via Map History/History of Cartography…. Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 9:27 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Energy & Resources
Printed Maps of Scandinavia and the Arctic: Next Thursday evening at the Scandinavia House in New York City, a talk by map collector William B. Ginsberg about his new book on the area of his expertise, a cartobibliography titled Printed Maps of Scandinavia and the Arctic, 1428-1601. Not (yet) on Amazon. Via MapHist…. Read more →; Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 4:45 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books
Turn the Map Over: My friend Robert, who’s the president of the local historical society, stopped by this afternoon with an interesting find — something he salvaged from a pile of junk that the town hall was about to throw out. It was a rolled wall map. We unrolled it, and discovered it… Read more →; 3
Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 7:30 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Rucker Agee Map Collection: The Birmingham Public Library’s Rucker Agee Map Collection contains, as you would expect, a number of old maps of Alabama, surrounding states like Mississsippi, Georgia and Florida, the U.S., and North America, but there are also world maps and maps of other locales as well in there. 687 items… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 6:01 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Il regno tutto di Candia: Peacay stumbled across a relatively new addition to Princeton’s digital collections, Il regno tutto di Candia. Abstract: “This work was published in Venice in 1651, three years after the Ottomans first tried to occupy the island of Crete, Venice’s last important trading foothold in the eastern Mediterreanean. Intended to… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 5:48 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Digital Approaches to Cartographic Heritage: The second Joint International Workshop on Digital Approaches to Cartographic Heritage will take place on May 18 and 19 in Athens; hosted by the ICA’s Digital Technologies in Cartographic Heritage working group, the conference is about all matters digital, from digitization to analysis to archiving. Via MapUtopia…. Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 8:44 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Conferences
A Book Roundup: Much book-related news has been accumulating over here; past time I shared it. Surveying, Mapping and GIS reviews Dava Sobel’s Longitude, a book about John Harrison, who discovered how to determine longitude. I think I need to read this book. Google Sightseeing’s book Off the Map is reviewed by the… Read more →; 3
Posted on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at 2:57 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy, Books, Cartography, Google Earth, Historical Maps
Guettard’s Mineralogical Atlas: BibliOdyssey’s latest map-related find is Jean-Étienne Guettard’s Atlas et description minéralogiques de la France (1780), digitized and available online at the University of Strasbourg, where, peacay notes, “maps start on page 223 … the full maps at the site are large, around 6 MB each.” See also this page… Read more →; Posted on Monday, January 22, 2007 at 3:03 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Earth Sciences
Israel and the Holy Land, Past and Present: I’m overdue in presenting a couple of links regarding maps of Israel and/or the “Holy Land,” which terms may or may not be interchangeable, but you get the general idea as to area. Holy Land Maps is an online collection of more than 1,000 maps, dating back as far… Read more →; 1
Posted on Sunday, January 21, 2007 at 6:39 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Miscellany
Broer Map Library Update: Dave Broer of the Broer Map Library writes: I wanted to contact you and thank you for the write ups that you have done in the past regarding my attempts at making a world-class online historic map collection available to the public. I keep adding what I can, when I… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, January 21, 2007 at 6:17 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
MAPCO: MAPCO — Map and Plan Collection Online — is, as you might expect, an online collection of maps: it’s relatively small at the moment, with more promised, with maps of London, Britain and Australia, mostly from the 19th century. The site design follows several others I’ve seen, with closeups of… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, January 18, 2007 at 12:55 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
16th-20th Century Maps of Africa: Northwestern University has scanned and uploaded a collection of 113 maps of Africa, dating from 1530 to 1915. The map collection is a part of the university’s Herskovitz Library, named after the scholar who founded the African Studies program at the university. BBC News coverage. Via GeoCarta…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, January 11, 2007 at 12:33 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Old Stockholm in Google Earth: Maps of Stockholm from 1625 to 1922 are available as downloadable Google Earth layers; the file sizes can be quite substantial. It’s of interest to me that Google Earth is being deployed as a platform to distribute scans of old maps — MrSid, watch your back. Via Ogle Earth…. Read more →; 1
Posted on Wednesday, January 10, 2007 at 8:27 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Google Earth
Historic Pittsburgh Map Collection: Historic Pittsburgh is a site featuring documents, maps and books from the University of Pittsburgh and other Pittsburgh-area collections. Their Map Collections section has four large series of map scans available: Geodetic and topographic survey maps for Pittsburgh between 1923 and 1961; Maps from the 1912 Flood Commission for… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 at 8:43 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Pittsburgh, Topo Maps & Trails
Panoramic Map of New York: Dave Kellam has scanned a panoramic map of New York, dating from 1939 or thereabouts, that he picked up a few months ago at a used bookstore. (Lucky find, that.) Via Plep…. Read more →; Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 4:18 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, New York
Encasing Waldseemüller’s Map: The only remaining known copy of Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map — the first to name the New World “America” — is owned by the Library of Congress. (Four gores also survive, according to the Waldseemüller Wikipedia page; one of these, I guess, went for auction last year.) To… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 10:28 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Harvard Library Acquires Ukrainian Map Collection: Bohdan Krawciw, a Ukrainian-born writer, translator and critic, amassed a map collection of some 900 items before his death in 1975. In November 2005, his daughter donated the collection to Harvard University; the University announced the acquisition this month: Harvard College Library; Harvard University Gazette. Krawciw’s thoroughness in acquiring… Read more →; Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 3:33 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
New York Fire Insurance Maps: Fire insurance maps, with their incredible detail, are always a great find; we’ve got a couple in local collections here, and I just think they’re magnificent. Unfortunately, they originally had onerous copyright restrictions that prohibited making copies, so these treasures can be kind of hard to find. But the New… Read more →; 1
Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 12:14 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, New York
More Maps Added to David Rumsey Collection: Another 1148 maps have been added to the David Rumsey Map Collection. This happens once or twice a year, but when it’s this many maps at once (as it usually is), it’s worth noting. Via MapHist; thanks also to Paul. Previously: David Rumsey Site Updates…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 9:52 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Nolli Map Prints For Sale: Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 map of Rome was the subject of a major web project by the University of Oregon that launched last year; a print of the map is now available for sale through that same web site. Even the special release price of $85 is not exactly cheap, but… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, November 30, 2006 at 7:51 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Rome
A Blog for ‘London: A Life in Maps’: There are hardly any posts up yet, but the London: A Life in Maps exhibition now has an accompanying blog. Via MapHist. Previously: London: A Life in Maps — Now Open and Online; Peter Barber on “London: A Life in Maps”; More About “London: A Life in Maps”; London: A… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, November 29, 2006 at 8:11 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Blogs, London, London: A Life in Maps
London: A Life in Maps — Now Open and Online: The British Library exhibition, “London: A Life in Maps,” is now open, both in real life and online. The virtual exhibition that Peter Barber referred to is now online as part of the overall London: A Life in Maps web site. Interesting to see that it presents the maps through… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, November 26, 2006 at 4:03 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Hacks & Mashups, London, London: A Life in Maps
Revue de la BNF’s Cartography Issue: The most recent issue of the Revue de la Bibliothèque nationale de France concerns cartography; most of the articles appear to be about early modern maps, though there’s one about the Internet as well. The table of contents, introduction and one of the articles are available online as PDFs…. Read more →; Posted on Sunday, November 26, 2006 at 2:14 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Scholarly Journals
Bavarian Land Survey Maps: Die Urpositionsblätter der Landvermessung in Bayern is an online collection of 19th-century topographic maps produced by Bavarian land surveyors. There are more than 900 of these 1:25,000-scale maps, put online by the Bavarian state library. Via BibliOdyssey, which shares some examples outside the map interface…. Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, November 22, 2006 at 10:02 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Peter Barber on ‘London: A Life in Maps’: Peter Barber — Peter Barber! — writes: London: A Life in Maps will be accompanied by a virtual exhibition, available on the BL website, for people who can’t visit. Though the emphasis of the exhibition will be on the great cartographic images and panoramas of London and on the ways… Read more →; Posted on Friday, November 17, 2006 at 8:37 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, London, London: A Life in Maps
Edinburgh Time-Gun Map: The Time-Gun Map of Edinburgh, published in 1861, overlays concentric circles to show “the time taken for the sound of the one o’clock gun to travel from Edinburgh Castle to different parts of Edinburgh and Leith.” Being able to calculate that your neighbourhood is eight seconds away, say, from the… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 12:10 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Cities
More About ‘London: A Life in Maps’: The Telegraph has more about “London: A Life in Maps,” the upcoming exhibit at the British Library (see previous entry). It opens on the 24th. Via MapHist…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 at 4:30 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, London, London: A Life in Maps
Google Earth Roundup: Automator, Rumsey: A couple of Google Earth items that made me happy. First, via Ogle Earth, the Google Earth Automator Pack, a (still-in-development) collection of Automator actions for the Macintosh version of Google Earth. Second, maps from the David Rumsey collection are now a Google Earth layer under “Featured Content,” Frank at… Read more →; 1
Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006 at 10:40 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Georeferencing, Google Earth, Macintosh
The Atlantic Neptune: The Atlantic Neptune, “a magnificent four-volume atlas of sea charts and views of the east coast of North America, published during the American Revolutionary War by Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres (1722-1824),” has been scanned and put online by the National Maritime Museum. Via MapHist…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, November 9, 2006 at 1:01 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Nautical
50 Maps at the Austrian National Library: The Austrian National Library has put online 50 maps from its collection, spanning five centuries. Sorted by century (from the 15th to the 19th) and with one of those zoom interfaces. Text and interface in German only. Thanks to peacay for the link…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, November 6, 2006 at 10:22 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
London: A Life in Maps: Coming up at the British Library and running from November 24 to March 4, an exhibition called “London: A Life in Maps”: “Maps, views, letters, and ephemera from the British Library collections, show the city’s transformation from a Roman outpost to the huge, heaving metropolis of today — and… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, October 31, 2006 at 8:28 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, London, London: A Life in Maps
Archiwum Map WIG: This site is a digital archive of maps produced by the Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny, the Polish Geographic-Military Institute, which existed between 1919 and 1939 and produced some very good topographic maps of the country. Lots of scans here, all very large files, of maps at 1:25K, 1:100K and 1:300K scales…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 at 7:26 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Topo Maps & Trails
Shakespeare’s World in Maps: At the University of Michigan’s Clements Library until December 22: Shakespeare’s World in Maps. From the Ann Arbor News article: “The maps, many of them produced during Shakespeare’s lifetime, were selected from the Clements collection and include several rarely seen cartographers’ works, including the 1579 atlas of England and Wales… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, October 25, 2006 at 6:14 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
New Popular Edition Maps Online: The New Popular Mapping site is a rough and ready interface to out-of-copyright (i.e., more than 50 years old) Ordnance Survey maps of England, most of which are from the postwar New Popular Edition series. It’s basically an alpha in the midst of testing, and there’s a ton of… Read more →; Posted on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 9:21 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Online Maps
Zoom Into Maps: The Library of Congress Geography and Map Division’s Zoom Into Maps site isn’t just an educational tool and teaching resource, it’s a portal into, guide to and sample of the division’s very large map collection. Via Very Spatial…. Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, October 18, 2006 at 10:02 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Education
Atlas de Trudaine: BibliOdyssey introduces us to an online collection by France’s national archives of the Atlas de Trudaine, a series of more than 3,000 maps made by Charles-Daniel Trudaine between 1745 and 1780. “The maps themselves are highly detailed and were originally commissioned to plot the royal roads. But they constitute… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 at 9:02 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Broer Library Adds 1,300 USGS Topo Maps: The Broer Map Library, which I mentioned last month, seems to be coming along nicely; Dave Broer announced on Maps-L that scans of 1,300 old USGS topo maps have been added to the collection. “This brings our online offering to around 2,800 maps,” he writes…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, October 16, 2006 at 11:21 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Topo Maps & Trails
The Map of Early Modern London: The Map of Early Modern London is an interactive annotated map of London based on the 16th-century “Agas” woodcut map, with clickable points (akin to Google Maps pushpins) that take you to more detailed information about a given location. Via Things Magazine. See previous entries: Old London Maps; 17th-Century… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, October 11, 2006 at 8:35 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, London
Warping Waldseemüller: John Hessler’s Warping Waldseemüller is a new blog about applying mathematical methods to old maps as a way of testing their accuracy. Sounds like it’s working the same vein as the new scholarly journal e_Perimetron (see previous entry). Via MapHist…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, October 9, 2006 at 7:52 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Blogs, Georeferencing
Maps and Society Lectures: The program for the 2006-2007 series of “Maps and Society” lectures at the Warburg Institute, University of London has been posted; they take place one or two Thursdays a month and are free to attend. Via MapHist. See previous entry: Map History Lectures…. Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, October 3, 2006 at 7:29 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Cartography, Conferences
Ptolemy’s Geographia: A new, scholarly edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia was launched in Switzerland last week. It’s apparently the first complete Greek text since an edition dating from the 1840s. The project page (in German only) is here. Via MapHist…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, October 2, 2006 at 8:51 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Library of Congress Digitizes 10,000th Map: The Library of Congress’s Geography and Map Division is a huge resource of digital images of old maps. On Wednesday they reached a symbolic but impressive milestone: they posted their 10,000 digitized map to their web site: Samuel de Champlain’s 1607 map of the northeastern coast of North America…. Read more →; Posted on Friday, September 29, 2006 at 9:19 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Libraries
Another Texas Bird’s-Eye-View Maps Exhibition: A collection of late-19th-century bird’s-eye-view maps of Texas cities will be on display at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas (near Amarillo), from March 17 to June 10 next year. This is presumably the same exhibition that was on display in Fort Worth earlier this year, so if… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 12:05 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Cities
Upcoming Conferences: Garrett Lectures; Map Designers: The theme for the fifth biennial Virginia Garrett Lectures on the History of Cartography is “Mapping the Sacred: Belief and Religion in the History of Cartography.” They take place on October 7 (lecture program) at the University of Texas at Arlington’s Central Library, the day before the fall meeting of… Read more →; Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 at 8:41 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Cartography, Conferences
Learning at the British Library: Learning at the British Library has a section on maps — not a comprehensive archive, but a selection that illustrates key themes for educative purposes using examples from the Library’s collection. Four sections: ideas, lies and deception, war, and wealth and poverty. Via Things Magazine…. Read more →; Posted on Saturday, September 23, 2006 at 9:37 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Education
Broer Map Library: The Broer Map Library is a digital archive of scanned maps with heady ambitions — “to provide its collection of maps and atlases online in order to allow libraries and researchers who would not otherwise have access to such a large collection, have them available.” Founded in 2002, they… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, September 17, 2006 at 3:21 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Ireland’s Historic Mapping Archive: Ireland’s Historic Mapping Archive is a new online collection of two 19th-century mapping series from the Irish Ordnance Survey: 1:10,650-scale maps produced between 1837 and 1842, in black and white and colour; and 1:2,500-scale black-and-white maps produced between 1888 and 1913. The drawback is that the maps are not freely… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 at 2:53 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Islamic Cartography Blog: Tarek Kahlaoui, who is working on a Ph.D. dissertation on Islamic cartography in the 13th to 16th centuries at the University of Pennsylvania, has just started a blog on the subject that will include, over time, a bibliography of the scholarly literature on scholarly cartography (it’s still early: only A… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, August 27, 2006 at 7:12 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Blogs, Cartography
Australian Maps Belatedly Discovered: Two maps held at the National Library of Australia for nearly a century have only recently been identified as original 1697 charts by Vlamingh, rather than printed copies, and as such are the oldest maps of Australia in Australian hands, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. (Most maps of Australia of… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 at 4:55 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Map the Universe: Blogs about antique maps, rather than the geospatial industry, are few and far between, but a new blog about antique maps and map collecting, plus the usual gamut of general subjects, started last month, with an eerily similar premise: Map the Universe. I have always loved maps, especially vintage maps… Read more →; 1
Posted on Friday, August 18, 2006 at 9:26 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Blogs
Dutch Cadastral and Topo Maps: It’s in Dutch, so I’m likely missing most of the nuances, but this site — De WoonOmgeving — has both 1832 cadastral and 2000 topo maps of the Netherlands available through the same interface; if both are available for a given region, you can toggle between them. The interface is… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, August 17, 2006 at 9:10 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Topo Maps & Trails
Los Angeles Mapped; Jo Mora: Boing Boing links to Los Angeles Mapped, the online version of an exhibition of historical maps of Los Angeles on display through January 2007 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The maps on display are diverse in both subject matter and style: from a railroad system map to a… Read more →; 1
Posted on Monday, August 7, 2006 at 7:43 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Art, Exhibitions, Los Angeles
Flickr Group: Old Maps: Another Flickr group: Old Maps. Featuring scans of. See previous entries: Flickr Geotagging Group; Art of the Road; Feel Small Project; Flickr Users’ Map Photos. See also Map Site Directory: Flickr…. Read more →; Posted on Saturday, August 5, 2006 at 12:28 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Groups & Societies
The Cartography of the Tropics: Vermessen: Kartographie der Tropen (“Between Cancer and Capricorn: The Cartography of the Tropics”) is an exhibition taking place at the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin until August 27. The site is in German, but the introduction has been translated into English; a few scans of the images are available on the… Read more →; Posted on Friday, August 4, 2006 at 8:41 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Ordnance Survey Maps Mashup: This page overlays out-of-copyright Ordnance Survey maps (circa 1925 to 1945) on the Google Maps interface. Via Map GIS News Blog Etc. Etc. See previous entry: Ordnance Survey Overlays on Multimap Aerial Photos…. Read more →; Posted on Friday, July 28, 2006 at 8:14 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Hacks & Mashups
Agnese’s Portolan Atlas: I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned portolan charts on The Map Room yet. In that vein, don’t miss peacay’s big post on BibliOdyssey about Battista Agnese’s sixteenth-century Portolan Atlas, scans of which are available on several sites…. Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 5:58 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Nautical
The U.S. Naval Observatory’s Celestial Atlases: Highlights of this page about the collection of the U.S. Naval Observatory include scans from several celestial atlases, including Bayer’s Uranometria (1661), Flamsteed’s Atlas céleste (1774), and Jamieson’s Celestial Atlas (1822). Via MetaFilter…. Read more →; Posted on Friday, July 14, 2006 at 3:23 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy
History of Cartography Tutorial: A tutorial on the history of cartography from professors at the University of Passau. A slide-based general overview, originally in German but translated into several other languages including English; some sections aren’t yet complete. It ends too soon: in the early modern period. Via MapHist…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, July 3, 2006 at 6:30 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, History of Cartography
Berlin City Map Archive: The Berlin City Map Project puts 26 maps of Berlin, from 1738 to 1989, online. It’s an amateur project; the author uses a flatbed scanner to scan city plans a piece at a time. Images are watermarked. Thanks to peacay for the link…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, June 26, 2006 at 8:50 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Berlin
Viele’s Map of Manhattan: For a so-called “remaindered link,” this is an impressive post: Jason Kottke began by linking to a story in today’s New York Times about Egbert Viele’s 1874 map of Manhattan — still used today by civil engineers because it shows the original shoreline and underground waterways. He also linked… Read more →; 2
Posted on Monday, June 12, 2006 at 10:52 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, New York
17th-Century London in Google Earth: Old meets new: Google Earth layers for London in 1666 and 1690. Suddenly the purpose behind e_Perimetron becomes clear. Via Things Magazine…. Read more →; 1
Posted on Tuesday, June 6, 2006 at 11:54 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Georeferencing, Google Earth, London
Maps of North Carolina: This is a nice find: a good-sized collection of maps of North Carolina, some dating as far back as the 17th century. The maps were scanned by the state archives; the ones I perused were in quite high resolution. Some of the scans are of photocopies (such as the 1730… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, June 6, 2006 at 8:58 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
e_Perimetron: e_Perimetron is a new quarterly web journal, the focus of which is the application of geospatial technologies to old maps. The first issue, for example, has articles that transform old maps to conform to known coordinates, assign projections to portolans, and so forth. The question under study, I guess, is… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, June 1, 2006 at 8:11 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, GIS, Georeferencing, Scholarly Journals
Question: Info on Copper Engraved Plates?: Charles Ryan writes, “I am looking for information on copper engraved plates used — many, many years ago — for producing maps and charts, particularly for Naval Hydrographic Office charts. Can you recommend a source for doing some research or finding information?”… Read more →; 2
Posted on Tuesday, May 30, 2006 at 3:14 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Nautical, Questions
Russian Forestry Maps: Alexi Karimov’s collection of Russian forestry maps, ranging from 1733 to 1920, are drawn from scans made of maps in the Russian archives for his lectures. Enjoy them on his site, but keep him out of trouble with Russian archivists by not reproducing his scans elsewhere. Via MapHist…. Read more →; Posted on Sunday, May 28, 2006 at 7:07 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Old London Maps: Old London Maps is a gem of a collection of antique maps and engravings depicting London from medieval times to the nineteenth century. Greenwood’s map of London (pictured at right; see previous entry) is there, as are many others. Thanks to Rich Owings for the link…. Read more →; 1
Posted on Monday, May 22, 2006 at 9:17 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, London
The Marvel of Maps: Thanks to MapHist, a book about maps and art during the Renaissance has been brought to my attention: art historian Francesca Fiorani’s The Marvel of Maps: Art, Cartography and Politics in Renaissance Italy. This book, according to the publisher, “focuses on two of the most significant and marvelous surviving Italian… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, May 13, 2006 at 10:59 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books
Santa Cruz’s 1550 Map of Mexico City: A 1550 map of Mexico City by cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz, currently held at the University of Uppsala in Sweden and normally not available to the public — it’s only one of two maps of 16th-century Mexico City — is now accessible online (project page). The map is zoomable… Read more →; Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 at 8:22 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
London Poverty in 1898 and 2001: Charles Booth’s late-nineteenth-century map of London poverty (see previous entry) is getting some additional attention lately: Boing Boing and Cartography link to this page, which compares Booth’s map with a 2001 map of London, and this Economist article, which discusses some of the changes (or lack thereof)…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, May 8, 2006 at 10:23 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, London
The University of Tulsa’s Hidden Maps: A University of Tulsa graduate student has stumbled across rare maps in the university library’s collection, including an 1822 map of North America by Henry S. Tanner, the Tulsa World reports. It turns out that incoming maps and other non-book artifacts had never been catalogued. Now he and a librarian… Read more →; 1
Posted on Wednesday, May 3, 2006 at 10:35 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Libraries
Maps from the Sumida Maritime Materials Collection: A collection of 20 maps, dating from the 17th to 19th centuries, from the Sumida Maritime Materials Collection. National and local maps of Japan, a map of Korea, a world map dating from 1699, and several miscellaneous maps make appearances. Java, JPEG and FlashPix formats. The text is mostly Japanese…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, May 1, 2006 at 9:49 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Minnesota Maps Online: Digitized antique maps from the Minnesota Historical Society’s collection, which numbers 19,000 maps and 2,000 volumes. The online sample is likely much smaller than that, but nevertheless includes a number of land survey maps, plat books (?) and atlases from the 19th century. Via Plep…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, May 1, 2006 at 8:35 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Historical Celestial Atlases on the Web: If you’re interested in antique celestial atlases, you’ll want to bookmark Historical Celestial Atlases on the Web, which provides links to a number of online reproductions of old star atlases. Via La Cartoteca. See previous entries: The Face of the Moon; Star Atlases; Celestial Atlases, Antique and Modern…. Read more →; Posted on Friday, April 28, 2006 at 12:40 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy
Australia on the Map, 1606-2006: Australia on the Map, 1606-2006 is a web site that commemorates the 400th anniversary of the first charting of Australia by European explorers. For our purposes, the neatest part of the site is five scans of early maps of Australia dated 1606 to 1814. Via MapHist…. Read more →; 2
Posted on Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 12:56 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Theatri Orbis Terrarum Enchiridion: Peacay’s got a nice post up on BibliOdyssey about the 1585 Theatri Orbis Terrarum Enchiridion by Favolius and Galle — not to be confused with the atlas with a similar name by Ortelius, a contemporary of theirs. “This atlas was produced during a highly active period in terms of cartographic… Read more →; Posted on Monday, April 17, 2006 at 3:29 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
The Cartography of Brazil: The Cartography of Brazil in the Collections of the National Library is an online collection of more than 300 maps of Brazil and South America from the National Library of Portugal. The main goal of this project was to make an inventory of the eighteenth-century maps of Brazil existing in… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, April 16, 2006 at 2:56 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Euratlas’s Antique Maps of Europe: Euratlas, a map store, has a collection of 18th- and 19th-century maps of Europe at two zoom levels; the detail is just transfixing. At right, detail from an 1852 map of post roads and railways in and around Germany. Other maps include Turkey, Switzerland, Italy, and various bits of Germany,… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, April 5, 2006 at 8:37 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
David Rumsey Site Updates: I’ve previously mentioned David Rumsey and his eponymous web site, an online repository of thousands of digitized maps from his even larger private collection. But yesterday Paul (aka peacay) wrote to say that the site had added more than a thousand more maps to the collection a couple of weeks… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, April 4, 2006 at 10:35 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Terres de Champagne-Ardenne: BibliOdyssey points to an exhibition of antique maps of the Champagne-Ardenne region of France: Terres de Champagne-Ardenne: Cinq siècles de cartographie (in French, naturally). The exhibition is touring various library locations in that region; the online version’s a bit complicated to navigate, but it does have a number of scans… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, March 30, 2006 at 9:39 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Exhibition Roundup: Fort Worth, Texas; Hannibal, Missouri: Patterns of Progress, an exhibition of Texas bird’s-eye-view maps — previously covered here — is now running at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas until May 28. More than sixty highly detailed and oversized prints in this special exhibition will offer a chronicle of one of the greatest… Read more →; Posted on Monday, March 6, 2006 at 3:26 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Art, Cities, Exhibitions
Chicago in Maps: The Chicago Tribune profiles local map collector Robert A. Holland, whose book, Chicago in Maps, 1612 to 2002, was published late last year. From the article: “In a section of the book Holland thinks of as ‘worlds within worlds,’ the particulars that gave character to the city are mapped. There’s… Read more →; Posted on Monday, February 6, 2006 at 8:32 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books, Chicago
Exhibition Roundup: NOAA, Versailles, Miami, Bangkok: Some upcoming map and map-related exhibitions to tell you about: Silver Spring, Maryland: From a NOAA press release: “Artifacts representing nearly 200 years of science, service and stewardship by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its ancestor agencies will be on public display at the agency’s headquarters in Silver… Read more →; 2
Posted on Sunday, January 29, 2006 at 7:59 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions, Nautical
Question: Maps and Copyright?: Recently I’ve received several questions relating copyright and reproducing other maps, so I thought I’d deal with them all at once. The first question deals with reproducing maps that may or may not be in the public domain; the second deals with using reproductions of old maps that themselves are… Read more →; 2
Posted on Sunday, January 15, 2006 at 9:11 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Questions
The Other World’s Oldest Map: Never mind the Soleto Map: pottery doesn’t count as maps, apparently. The City of Turin (Torino), as part of its celebrations related to next month’s Winter Olympics, will have on display the first-century-BC Papyrus of Artemidorus, which, while several centuries younger than the Soleto Map, is, it’s argued, the real… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, January 5, 2006 at 3:20 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Undersea Cable Maps: A collection of maps of undersea cables, beginning with Atlantic telegraph cable maps from 1858 and finishing with a world cable map from 1992. Most of the maps are older, though, and quite interesting. Via Things Magazine…. Read more →; 2
Posted on Tuesday, January 3, 2006 at 5:25 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Communications
Texas Map Reproductions: The Texas General Land Office is selling reproductions of antique maps of Texas for as little as $20, an Austin TV station reports. Thanks to Tony Campbell for the link…. Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 at 9:05 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
NYPL Map Room Reopens: Today’s New York Times has a feature about the New York Public Library’s $5-million renovation of its map room, which reopens Thursday as the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division. The map room touts itself as the public library with the largest collection of maps (nearly 420,000 of them)… Read more →; Posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 at 7:46 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Libraries
Guardian Feature on Map Books: Yesterday’s Grauniad featured a review of three mapping books with a heavy emphasis on the art of cartography: Charles Booth’s 1889 Descriptive Map of London Poverty, a London Topographical Society reprint that for some reason isn’t on their site; Peter Whitfield’s new Cities of the World: A History in Maps,… Read more →; Posted on Friday, December 2, 2005 at 8:40 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books
Globe Museum in Vienna: Opening today in Vienna, the Globe Museum of the Austrian National Library at its new digs in the refurbished Palais Mollard. The collection of more than 400 globes, 240 of which are on display, includes early modern globes by Mercator, Blaeu and Coronelli. Apparently the collection was only open an… Read more →; 1
Posted on Thursday, December 1, 2005 at 3:36 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions, Globes
TV Exec Donates Wyoming Maps: Jack Rosenthal, a Wyoming TV executive, has donated his collection of old maps of the state to a local museum. More about Rosenthal and his map jones in this quasi-coherent article from the Caspar Star-Tribune. Via GeoCarta…. Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 at 8:29 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Exhibition Roundup: Cartography of Globalization, Quivira Collection: At the Toronto Free Gallery until December 17, “Here Be Dragons: The Cartography of Globalization,” an exhibition of “counter-cartography”. From the gallery’s flash-based web site: “Recently, activists, artists and researchers have used the form of the map to visually represent the distribution of power, the circulation of information, and the… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, November 26, 2005 at 11:56 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
ICHC 2005 in Budapest: To follow up on my previous post, here’s the home page for this year’s ICHC, held last July in Budapest, which its coordinator, Zsolt Török, wanted me to point you to…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, November 24, 2005 at 10:19 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Cartography, Conferences
Swiss Journal and Conference on the History of Cartography: Thomas Klöti passes on links to the home pages of the Swiss-based Cartographica Helvetica, a German-language journal about the history of cartography, and the forthcoming International Conference on the History of Cartography, which takes place in Berne in July 2007…. Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, November 22, 2005 at 10:58 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Conferences, History of Cartography, Scholarly Journals
The Western World’s Oldest Map: In today’s edition of the Daily Telegraph, an article about the oldest map in the western world: the Soleto Map, unearthed two years ago in southern Italy, which dates to 500 BC. The map, which is on a postage-stamp-sized fragment of glazed terracotta (an “ostrakon”), depicts the Salentine peninsula (the… Read more →; 1
Posted on Friday, November 18, 2005 at 1:18 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
GTA Digital Mapping Project: Plep points to the Greater Toronto Area Digital Mapping Project, done by the University of Toronto’s map library. It’s old-style and not very accessible (it requires a plugin), but it’s got a collection of old maps and more recent aerial photos…. Read more →; Posted on Sunday, November 13, 2005 at 11:07 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Satellite & Aerial, Toronto
General Maps of Persia, 1477-1925: Here’s another big, expensive atlas to tell you about: Cyrus Alai’s General Maps of Persia, 1477-1925. According to Tony Campbell, who wrote the introduction and brought it to our attention on MapHist, Alai spent 15 years examining 1,200 maps to prepare this book; no one, he adds, has tackled… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, November 8, 2005 at 9:58 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books
Seminar on Errors in Early Maps: A seminar about errors in early maps takes place this Saturday in Annapolis, Maryland; topics for discussion include extra islands in John Smith’s maps of Chesapeake Bay (see previous entry) and maps showing California as an island…. Read more →; 1
Posted on Wednesday, October 5, 2005 at 8:01 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Mapping Errors
Blaeu’s Atlas Maior (1665): Gadling points to a new release from über-expensive book publisher Taschen: a reproduction of Joan Blaeu’s 1665 Atlas Maior. The original was in Latin and in 11 volumes; the modern version is nearly 800 pages, weighs 7.2 kg, and, from the pictures on Taschen’s web page for the book, looks… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, September 25, 2005 at 9:09 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books
British Library: Mercator Atlas Online: The British Library’s new Turning the Pages online gallery, which presents rare books in a Flash-based interface where you physically turn the pages with your mouse pointer (a bit overdone, but it works), includes Mercator’s sixteenth-century atlas of Europe. Via MapHist…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, September 22, 2005 at 11:30 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Coronelli’s Globes on Display: Géo212 reports that Coronelli’s globes are on display in Paris for the first time in 25 years, as part of the reopening of the Grand Palais. See coverage from the Nouvel Observateur and Radio France Internationale; if you don’t read French, try, oddly enough, South Africa’s Mail and Guardian. Thierry… Read more →; 2
Posted on Wednesday, September 21, 2005 at 9:16 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Globes
Treasured Maps: Treasured Maps, an exhibition of more than 80 rare maps and atlases from the New York Public Library’s Map Division holdings, is on now through April 9, 2006 at the NYPL’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library (Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street). Free admission! The New York Times has a review… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, September 18, 2005 at 9:58 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
NOAA’s Historical Map and Chart Collection: NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey’s Historical Map and Chart Collection “contains over 20,000 maps and charts from the late 1700s to present day. The Collection includes some of the nation’s earliest nautical charts, hydrographic surveys, topographic surveys, geodetic surveys, city plans and Civil War battle maps.” It’s a huge, searchable… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, September 18, 2005 at 7:29 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Nautical, Surveying, Topo Maps & Trails
1895 Electoral Atlas of Canada: From Canada’s National Archives, the Electoral Atlas of the Dominion of Canada, which publishes scans of the original 1895 maps of federal electoral districts; these would have been in use during the 1896 election. Thanks again to peacay (whose new blog, BibliOdyssey, is off to a great start)…. Read more →; Posted on Sunday, September 18, 2005 at 7:22 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Electoral Maps
Antique Maps of Iceland: Antique Maps of Iceland: “All antique maps of Iceland (older than 1900) that are in the collection of the National and University Library of Iceland and the Central Bank of Iceland have been converted to a digital format and are accessible here. A short historical description in Icelandic and… Read more →; 1
Posted on Tuesday, September 13, 2005 at 3:30 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Pugsley Collection of Early Canadian Maps: The W. H. Pugsley Collection of Early Canadian Maps at McGill University: In 1971-72 Dr. William Howard Pugsley, a McGill alumnus, donated a collection of 50 early Canadian maps, dating from 1556 to 1857, to the McGill University Libraries. Dr. Pugsley collected these maps during the late 1930s, and World… Read more →; Posted on Saturday, September 10, 2005 at 8:34 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Ryhiner Map Collection: The Ryhiner Map Collection “consists of more than 16,000 maps, charts, plans and views from the 16th to the 18th century, covering the whole globe. Together with the 20,000 manuscript maps of the State Archives, the Canton of Berne owns not only a local, but a worldwide geographical memory.” In… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, September 7, 2005 at 9:22 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
WPA Survey Maps for Los Angeles: Also from the USC Digital Archive, WPA land-use survey maps for the City of Los Angeles, 1933-1939: The Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted a land use survey from December 18, 1933 to May 8, 1939 for the city of Los Angeles, Department of City Planning. It covered approximately 460 square… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, September 6, 2005 at 8:34 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Los Angeles
Sea of Korea Map Collection: The USC Digital Archive’s Sea of Korea Map Collection consists of original old maps, dating from 1606 to 1895, in English, French, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Latin, German and Russian. It was formed by digitizing the combination of two private collections comprised of 172 maps. The David Lee Collection (of 132… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, September 6, 2005 at 8:21 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Florida Maps: A simply massive collection of historic maps of Florida — “over 3,100 Florida maps from the 1500s through the present” — from Exploring Florida, an online educational resource. Via Plep…. Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, September 6, 2005 at 6:53 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
The Gough Map: The Gough Map is the oldest surviving road map of Great Britain. (Pictured above; east is at the top of the map.) The map itself dates to around 1360, but was discovered by Richard Gough in 1774, and donated to Oxford’s Bodleian Library in 1809, where it remains today…. Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, September 6, 2005 at 8:54 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Mapping the Northwest Passage: Of Maps and Men: In Pursuit of a Northwest Passage is an online exhibition from the Princeton University Library; it’s got an excellent collection of map scans: this page has 12 of them, dating from 1528 to 1907, which reflect our changing knowledge of the North; high-resolution versions are also… Read more →; Posted on Monday, September 5, 2005 at 12:47 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Russian Maps of China: Maps of central Asia and western China produced by Russian cartographers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from the China Historical GIS project. Thanks to Language Hat for the link. See previous entry: Soviet Topo Maps; Old Russian Maps…. Read more →; Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 at 11:11 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Coordinates: Coordinates is the journal of the Map and Geography Round Table of the American Library Association. It’s an online journal; articles are published irregularly rather than on an issue-by-issue basis, and, even better, it’s freely available, in HTML and PDF versions. It seems to be a relatively new venture: four… Read more →; Posted on Monday, August 29, 2005 at 6:20 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Scholarly Journals
Hargrett Library’s Rare Map Collection: Peacay reports that he has discovered the Hargrett Library’s map collection at the University of Georgia, which, according to the site, “maintains a collection of more than 800 historic maps spanning nearly 500 years, from the sixteenth century through the early twentieth century. … Although not limited to a single… Read more →; 1
Posted on Sunday, August 28, 2005 at 8:27 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Maps from the State Library of New South Wales: Crux was a 2000 exhibition of rare maps from the State Library of New South Wales. The exhibition web pages aren’t nearly as interesting, though, as viewing all 89 maps from the exhibition via the library’s online catalogue, and you can zoom in for a closer look, too. Thanks, peacay…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, August 22, 2005 at 9:18 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Antique Maps at HKUST: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s Antique Maps Database: “The Antique Maps of China collection includes more than 230 maps, charts, pictures, books and atlases. It represents almost all samples of China maps produced by European cartographers from the 16th to 19th centuries. This cartographic archive vividly records… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, August 18, 2005 at 1:43 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Alabama Maps: Alabama Maps is a big collection of maps from the University of Alabama’s Cartographic Research Laboratory, in three main sections: contemporary maps, which features maps generated by the laboratory; historical maps, a collection of digitized images of old maps (not necessarily limited to Alabama, but from Alabama based collections); and… Read more →; 1
Posted on Wednesday, August 17, 2005 at 8:00 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Satellite & Aerial
International Antiquarian Map Sellers Association: The International Antiquarian Map Sellers Association, founded in 2002 to “promote the professional trade in antiquarian, collectible maps and related books,” has a code of ethics; given recent events, see especially section 3. Not that professional sanctions have ever been all that effective where membership was not required (legally or… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, August 10, 2005 at 6:09 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Groups & Societies
Interactive Nolli Map: Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 map of Rome was a masterpiece: it was detailed, accurate and eschewed the prevailing “bird’s-eye” perspective for an overhead view. Researchers at the University of Oregon has put together a major web site on Nolli’s map, complete with background and research papers. Most notable, though, is its… Read more →; 1
Posted on Saturday, August 6, 2005 at 3:17 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Cities, Rome
Frederik den Femte’s Atlas: Frederik den Femte, King of Denmark between 1746 and 1766, had a map collection that grew to more than 3500 plates in 55 volumes. Denmark’s Royal Library has scanned these plates and made them available online; a plugin is required to see them at maximum resolution. From the site: “The… Read more →; Posted on Friday, August 5, 2005 at 10:41 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Some Medieval Maps: University course pages are frequently hidden gems. Readings for week nine of Prof. Kelly’s Medieval Literature and Culture course at Northeastern University focus on maps and travel literature from the 13th to 15th centuries, and include some excellent scans of the Hereford Mappa Mundi, a Genovese portolano, and a Ptolemaic… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, August 3, 2005 at 8:17 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Texas Bird’s-Eye Views: Texas Bird’s-Eye Views presents 59 bird’s-eye views of 44 Texas cities in the late 1800s, and provides some background on the genre and the itinerant artists who moved from city to city offering their services. (Thanks, peacay.) See previous entry: Panoramic Maps…. Read more →; Posted on Saturday, July 30, 2005 at 7:56 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Cities
Enclosures in Berkshire: For someone who claims he’s not a map aficionado, peacay’s awfully good about sending me excellent links to map sites. His latest submission is from a site that looks at the process of enclosure in Berkshire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centures; the site uses Ordnance Survey maps from the… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, July 28, 2005 at 8:31 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Maps at the New York Public Library: The New York Public Library’s Map Division has literally hundreds of thousands of maps and thousands of atlases in its vaults; hundreds of them are available online through the library’s Digital Gallery. Holdings include the Slaughter Collection of English maps, maps depicting the history of the U.S. and of New… Read more →; 1
Posted on Sunday, July 24, 2005 at 10:05 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Antiquarian Maps at Reed College: Reed College’s Antiquarian Maps site hasn’t been updated in six years, and several pages have presumably been “under construction” since that time. But, says peacay, who submitted this link, “there are definitely some fine maps available — with a high resolution option, just a bit slow on ADSL.” It’s an… Read more →; Posted on Friday, July 15, 2005 at 10:02 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Mapping Colonial America: “Mapping Colonial America” is (1) an online exhibit on the Colonial Williamsburg site, available in low-bandwidth and high-bandwidth Flash versions; (2) a real-life exhibit at the DeWitt Wallace Museum of Decorative Art in Williamsburg, Virginia, running until October 9; (3) based on Prichard and Talliaferro’s book, Degrees of Latitude: Mapping… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 at 10:58 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
MapSouthampton Adds Old Maps: MapSouthampton is Southampton City Council’s interacctive mapping service; it’s a Java-based map tool that allows you to view, pan and zoom several layers of data — the sort of slow, clunky web-based interface to GIS data that looks embarrassing since Google Maps came along. But I digress. The news is… Read more →; 1
Posted on Friday, July 8, 2005 at 5:49 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Cities, Online Maps
Question: Matthaeus Seutter’s Pays de Perou et Chili: Pablo Halkyard writes: I am trying to find out about a German cartographer, Matthaeus Seutter (1678-1757) who drew and published a map called “Le Pays de Perou et Chili” (The Countries of Peru and Chile). I am trying to find out when this map was published, whether it was part… Read more →; Posted on Friday, July 8, 2005 at 9:55 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Questions
Maps from the National Library of South Africa: Digital Fine Art, which does reproductions from the collections of the National Library of South Africa, has a couple of pages of scans of 17th- and 18th-century maps of Africa and, more specifically, the Cape. Thanks to PK for the link…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, June 30, 2005 at 6:42 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
1895 U.S. Atlas: The 1895 U.S. Atlas features reasonably high-resolution scans of maps of U.S. states, counties and territories from that year. Via Plep (our countdown to International Plep Day continues)…. Read more →; 1
Posted on Friday, June 10, 2005 at 12:07 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Maps from the Delaware Public Archives: As part of its digital archives, the Delaware Public Archives has put online a collection of maps, one of which dates back to 1688. Thanks to Rick Stratton for the link…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 at 3:35 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
National Archives of Japan Map Collection: The National Archives of Japan’s Digital Gallery has a substantial online collection of old maps, scanned at high resolution. Thanks to peacay for the link…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 at 3:22 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Old Map of Middleton, CT: Dan Brown has been having fun browsing the Library of Congress’s online map collection, and spends some time looking at an old (and, at least on his page, undated) map of Middleton, Connecticut. Via Things Magazine…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, May 23, 2005 at 8:55 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Paris 1911: A reproduction of the 1911 Baedeker guide for Paris — it’s small, and I’m not a fan of the interface, but it’s neat to see how much of the city has remained unchanged (I see a lot of familiar places). Via Plep…. Read more →; 1
Posted on Monday, May 16, 2005 at 12:57 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Paris
Question: Pictures of Jan Jansson and Herman Moll?: Debbie MacPherson writes, “I’m wondering if you know where I can find a picture of the mapmakers Jan Jansson and Herman Moll for an exhibit I am working on called Places & Spaces. I appreciate any help you could provide.” My cursory search of the web turns up both biographies… Read more →; 1
Posted on Friday, March 25, 2005 at 12:44 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Questions
The Unveiling of Britain: From the British Library, an online exhibition: The Unveiling of Britain. When the ancient Greeks looked beyond their Mediterranean world, Britain was virtually invisible, lost in the mists of legend. Their view, or lack of it, survived as late as the ninth century in maps that do little more than… Read more →; Posted on Friday, March 25, 2005 at 12:36 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Hipkiss’s Scanned Old Maps: Jonathan Hipkiss writes to tell us about his massive collection of maps scanned from old books, many of which date from the 1800s, all of which are scanned at 600 dpi, which is quite high-resolution. I have a growing collection of old books which each contain a large number of… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, March 22, 2005 at 11:58 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Blaeu Atlas of Scotland, 1654: Online at the National Library of Scotland: “The first Atlas of Scotland, containing 49 engraved maps and 154 pages of descriptive text, translated from Latin into English for the first time.” Via Plep. See previous entries: Pont’s Maps of Scotland; Maps of Scotland, 1560-1928…. Read more →; Posted on Sunday, March 20, 2005 at 8:33 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
A Talk on Renaissance Mapping: Next Wednesday at the Washington University in St. Louis, a talk by history professor Christine R. Johnson titled “The Art & Science of Renaissance Mapping: Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.” At the end of the 16th century, Europe was remaking itself and its relationship with the world. In the beautifully… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, March 17, 2005 at 7:40 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
SF Bay Topo Maps: UC Berkeley has scanned and put online about a hundred years’ worth of USGS topographic maps of the San Francisco Bay area. Via Plep…. Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, February 9, 2005 at 4:37 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Topo Maps & Trails
The John Smith Project: In 1608, Capt. John Smith explored the Chesapeake Bay area, and in 1612 a map of his travels was printed. Now, nearly 400 years later, in an attempt to prove that Smith visited the site of the present-day town of Vienna, Maryland, researchers are using digital technology to cross-reference Smith’s… Read more →; 2
Posted on Sunday, February 6, 2005 at 4:56 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Soviet Topo Maps; Old Russian Maps: Ezra Padoa writes with a few links to collections of Russian/Soviet maps. First off are collections of Soviet military topographical maps. Says Ezra, “I’ve heard that Soviet military cartographers could be tried for treason if they made any mistakes. At this site you can find many fruits of that evil… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, November 25, 2004 at 10:08 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Topo Maps & Trails
Hereford Mappa Mundi: Murky writes, “through no prior planning, I stumbled over the mappa mundi this weekend.” Here’s his account of his encounter with the Mappa Mundi in Hereford. (See previous entry: Mappæ Mundi.)… Read more →; Posted on Monday, November 1, 2004 at 9:47 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Old Hampshire Maps: Old Hampshire Maps consists, as you might imagine, of scans of old maps of Hampshire, from the 1500s to the 1800s. Via MetaFilter…. Read more →; Posted on Friday, October 15, 2004 at 9:21 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Historic Cities: Historic Cities is an ambitious Israeli project that presents scans of old maps of cities from across Europe, North Africa and the Near East. High-resolution scans of some of the maps, which date back at least as far as the 16th century, are available. There aren’t necessarily many maps per… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 at 9:51 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Cities
Genmaps: Old British Maps: Genmaps is “a site devoted to online images of English, Welsh and Scottish maps from their beginnings to the early 20th Century.” It’s quite a large collection, with maps dating as far back as the 1500s, though some of the scans are a little small. There’s also an extensive page… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 at 9:40 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
David Rumsey Profile: Today’s San Francisco Chronicle has a profile of David Rumsey, whose eponymous web site hosts a massive digital archive of his even more massive private collection of old maps: 10,000 maps — out of a total collection of 150,000! It’s a fascinating portrait of a man who got a little… Read more →; Posted on Monday, September 27, 2004 at 11:55 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Books, Maps Online
Prisoner of War Map: Murky posts the story of the map his grandfather kept while a prisoner of war during World War II, along with scans of the map itself. It is a flimsy document, held together with a wing and a prayer, and a few pieces of tape. The map was kept in… Read more →; Posted on Sunday, September 26, 2004 at 6:54 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Historic Topo Maps of New England and New York: The University of New Hampshire Library has put online a digital collection of old topo maps of New England and New York. Very high-resolution scans. This online collection of over 1500 USGS topographic maps includes complete geographical coverage of New England and New York from the 1890s to 1950s. I… Read more →; Posted on Monday, September 20, 2004 at 10:18 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Topo Maps & Trails
Mythical Geography: The Philadelphia Print Shop has a page on mythical geography in antique maps: Illusions, Confusions and Delusions. Old maps are filled with inaccuracies — rivers running a wrong course, cities placed incorrectly, coastlines lacking bays, and mountains, lakes and islands missing completely. The mistakes in old maps are one of… Read more →; Posted on Friday, July 30, 2004 at 12:53 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Imaginary Places
Boston and Maine; Maine Central: The Guilford Rail System web site has a page of maps of two of its predecessor railroads: a 1916 map of the Boston and Maine (853 KB JPEG) and a 1923 map of the Maine Central (456 KB JPEG). I do like old rail system maps; could you tell?… Read more →; Posted on Monday, July 5, 2004 at 11:14 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Railroads
Freshwater Lochs of Scotland: Still working on my backlog of links. Here’s a collection of bathymetric maps — i.e., nautical maps showing soundings (depth) at various points — of Scottish freshwater lochs published in the early 20th Century. The survey was done from 1897 to 1909: “Over 10 years some 60,000 soundings were taken… Read more →; Posted on Friday, July 2, 2004 at 7:01 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Still Another Map Room: When I picked “The Map Room” as the name of this blog, it was because I wanted a relatively generic name, and it was in recognition of the fact that many university libraries’ map collections are called map rooms. Such as Oxford University’s Bodleian Library Map Room, which refers to… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, June 23, 2004 at 10:48 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
17th-Century Dutch City Maps: Plep points to this collection of maps of Dutch cities from Blaeu’s Toonneel der Steden of 1652…. Read more →; 1
Posted on Wednesday, June 23, 2004 at 10:36 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Another Map Room: Via Colby Cosh (link semi-permanent), here’s maproom.org (no relation), from which you can download high-quality scans from old maps and atlases. Seems to be part of a larger project by map enthusiast Nick Wedd; there’s more at maproom.co.uk (also no relation). (Neither should this site or Wedd’s sites be confused… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, June 16, 2004 at 10:04 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Boccaccio’s Decameron: “Continuing my crusade to provide you with the finest fictional maps,” says Jeff Patterson, who provides us with a link to Maps of Boccaccio’s Decameron. It’s part of a study site on that work of medieval literature; includes maps from the period (late 14th Century) and historical maps…. Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, June 16, 2004 at 9:49 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Historical Maps
Maps of Iceland: Antique Maps of Iceland: All antique maps of Iceland (older than 1900) that are in the collection of the National and University Library of Iceland have been converted to a digital format and are accessible here. The library does not have all maps of Iceland before this date but would… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 9:29 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Lehigh Valley Railroad: Also via Things Magazine, a scan of an 1870 system map (large JPEG) of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, from a site that archives timetables of New Jersey railroads…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2004 at 9:33 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Railroads
Henry Popple’s Map: The second Osher Map Library link brought to us by Plep is to a reproduction of Henry Popple’s 1733 map of North America: This web site presents a subset of Mark Babinski’s Henry Popple’s 1733 Map of The British Empire in North America (Garwood, NJ: Krinder Peak Publishing, 1998). Although… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, April 22, 2004 at 10:18 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
The Cartographic Creation of New England: Another exhibition that took place years ago but which still has a web presence: The Cartographic Creation of New England. With lots of images of early maps (the collection includes immediate post-discovery woodcuts from the late fifteenth century, and carries on into the twentieth century), this exhibit’s purpose is to… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, April 22, 2004 at 10:08 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Paris Metro, 1937: Though there have certainly been changes, the remarkable thing about this 1937 map of the Paris metro is that it shows how much of the current network was already in place by then (via Kottke; see previous entry: Paris Metro)…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, April 8, 2004 at 9:35 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Paris
Mappæ Mundi: Despite the fact that the tagline in my about page mentions mappæ mundi, I’ve yet to mention them in this blog. Links are (of course) welcome. I’ll get things started with the Wikipedia entry and a bibliography of mappæ mundi and scholarly works on the subject…. Read more →; Posted on Monday, April 5, 2004 at 10:54 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Railroads in the Pacific Northwest: An extensive web site about the Great Northern Railway in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley includes reproductions of 1890s-era maps of railroads in the Pacific Northwest and early twentieth-century maps of the Fraser Valley region…. Read more →; Posted on Thursday, March 11, 2004 at 11:49 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Railroads
Overland Maps: Trails of Hope: Overland Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869 (at the Library of Congress as Trails to Utah and the Pacific: Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869) has maps, including digital scans of a number of original maps from that period. (via Plep)… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, March 3, 2004 at 10:27 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Exhibitions
Greenwood’s Map of London, 1827: I’ve posted enough maps of London here that I was sure that I had posted Greenwood’s Map of London, 1827 before, but apparently not. So here you go: an interactive version that allows you to click on individual panels to zoom closer. (via Plep)… Read more →; 1
Posted on Wednesday, March 3, 2004 at 8:47 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Urbis Romae: Richard points me to the Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project. “This is one of my favourite map stories,” he says. This enormous map, measuring ca. 18.10 × 13 meters (ca. 60 × 43 feet), was carved between 203-211 CE and covered an entire wall inside the Templum Pacis in… Read more →; Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 at 5:41 PM
Categories: Antique Maps
Vintage Maps of U.S. Cities: Members of Tribe.net’s Map Lovers tribe (moderated by yours truly) have posted links to nineteenth- and twentieth-century maps of Boston, New York and San Francisco. Neat stuff…. Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, February 24, 2004 at 8:50 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Panoramic Maps: The Library of Congress has an online collection of panoramic maps — i.e., maps seen from a so-called “bird’s-eye view” rather than from directly above. I saw an awful lot of these in archives and libraries when I was doing historical research; I think just about every settlement of a… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, February 24, 2004 at 8:44 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
Madaba Mosaic Map: “The Madaba Mosaic Map is a unique piece of art realised in 6th cent. A.D. as a decoration for the pavement of a church in the town of Madaba (Jordan) in the Byzantine Near East… . [It] is deemed by some scholars to be the best topographic representation… Read more →; Posted on Tuesday, February 24, 2004 at 8:36 AM
Categories: Antique Maps
The Face of the Moon; Star Atlases: The Cartoonist has discovered the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology in Kansas City, which has quite a bit of stuff on celestial mapping. In addition to an exhibition of rare books and maps called The Face of the Moon: Galileo to Apollo, the library’s site has made… Read more →; Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 12:12 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy, Exhibitions

Note: Entries from 2003 were not categorized and will not appear in the category archives. Please consult the monthly archives.

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