Antique Maps

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Entries in these subcategories are not included below.

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… »
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… »
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,… »
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… »
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… »
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…. »
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… »
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,… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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…. »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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…. »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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…. »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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,… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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…. »
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… »
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…. »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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,… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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…. »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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…. »
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… »
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:… »
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… »
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…. »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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…. »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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…. »
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… »
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… »
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…. »
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…. »
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:… »
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…. »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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… »
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,… »
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… »
Posted on Friday, August 18, 2006 at 9:26 AM
Categories: Antique Maps, Blogs