The "Greatest Grid"

Yesterday I made a trip to the Museum of the City of New York to see The Greatest Grid. This exhibit celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Commissioner's Plan of 1811 that established the city's grid system. The exhibit is full of historic maps and the centerpiece is the Commissioners Plan Map of 1811 laid out on a glass covered table.

The grid was placed over the more sparsely settled areas above North Street (now Houston) without regard to the city's topography, water features or existing houses. Villages such as Harlem were eliminated to make room for straight streets. Houses that stood in the way (or even near the way) were demolished or moved. There is a section of the exhibit showing how houses were moved to accommodate the grid. This map from the exhibit's web site is one of many that show the land before the streets were built with the grid superimposed in light gray.

The exhibit starts with a video loop of residents proudly stating their address along the grid eg."125th and First!" After spending hours gawking at the maps you can go upstairs and see The Unfinished Grid, a collection of future design speculations resulting from a call for ideas from the Architectural League of New York. Many of these designs revolve around ways to break free from the grid's restrictions.

This collection of maps, photographs, newspaper clippings and other artifacts is very impressive and well worth a visit if you are in the New York metropolitan area. It runs through April 15th, 2012. The museum is located on the grid, at 5th and 103rd.

Map of the Week Miscellany for September, 2011

There's a lot going on this week and if I only didn't have to work I could devote more time to these posts and make them more meaningful but be careful what you wish for. Anyway here are a few interesting items I've found this week:

An Army Corps of Engineers map of the flood control structures in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.

 The manual this map appears in describes how the levees in Wilkes Barre and across the river in Kingston can form a bottleneck and make flooding worse for communities downstream. In 1972 these walls were too short to contain the flow from Tropical Storm Agnes and the city was flooded. The water stored from this flooding helped spare downstream places like Sunbury. Since then the levees have been raised, partially sparing Wilkes Barre from this weekend's floods (though water did get in by seeping under the levees.)

This sent more water to downstream places like Bloomsburg, where record setting flooding occurred.


Below is a map from the AP showing the some of the worst hit places.

Daniel Huffman's wonderful river schematic map shows how these places interconnect.

***********************************
Other Miscellaneous Notes:
***********************************
Tomorrow night (September 15th) David Byrne will squish an inflatable globe under the High Line in New York City. It will be there until October 1st. To sort of quote one of his songs "this was a parking lot, now it's all covered in globe." More information is available from New York Magazine.

************************************
From LA Taco ("Celebrating the taco lifestyle in Los Angeles") comes this chart showing the population growth of the largest cities in the USA. 

Maps on Album Covers

I thought it would be a good idea to spotlight album covers featuring maps but it turns out that there are fewer than I expected. I had to dig in some obscure places to find the ones below. Not having an exhaustive music collection I may have missed something obvious or notable. Let me know and I'll add it to the list.

I'll start with one of my personal favorite covers. Nile Rodgers of the disco/funk band Chic came out with a solo album titled "Adventures in the Land of the Good Groove" with a cover featuring lower Manhattan with faux latin place names like "Uptownicus" and "Nova Joysey."

Probably the best known album on this list is Chicago XI-Baby what a big surprise!

Martha and the Muffins went with the topographic Toronto look.

Early American folk music specialists Tasker's Chance used this historic map of part of Maryland.

Representing the world of experimental classical music is the Chicago Sound Map.








Hardcore metal band Slayer's "World Painted Blood" has a collector's edition with four different covers that when put together form a world illustrated with skulls and bones.

 This is more of a globe than a map but I've always been partial to Yes so I had to include "Fragile."



Canadian popsters Barenaked Ladies used an oddly styled Michigan for a live album with the somewhat clever title "Talk to the Hand."

Two Philadelphia area bands previously covered here have some good map artwork. The Strapping Fieldhands map showing sightings of the New Jersey Devil and Slo-Mo's map of the Northern Liberties neighborhood.

Finally, a 4 CD compilation called "Left of the Dial: Dispatched from the '80s Underground" used some map mashups for their covers. Don't try to use the map below for wayfinding!

UPDATE: for more good stuff see the follow up post.

Map of the Week-Census Preview

Last week the New York Times put out this nice interactive map showing some of the latest data released from the Census Bureau. The dot maps are the most interesting. They nicely illustrate patterns of race:

and income:

The entire country is covered so you can zoom, pan or choose a location. If you zoom too far in you lose the patterns a bit and also get some misleading information because each dot represents multiple people, not individual households.

 To really see the patterns of segregation, zoom out.

Here's a larger city with a more diverse breakdown.

The income map reveals the inner city income holes that are prevalent in older cities like Baltimore, but less so in Washington D.C. where there is much more inner city wealth.

If you zoom out a ways the dots seem to follow county boundaries. Zooming in arranges them in a more realistic pattern. I'm not sure what algorithm produces that result.

Happy Holidays and may your next year be filled with new census maps!

Coffee, Earthquakes and World Cup Shopping

The New York Times has been producing some excellent maps lately. Here are some recent examples of their cartographic finery.

New York's Best Coffee

Earthquake risk areas in Istanbul and cities at risk of major earthquake destruction

 Where to be fashionable in Cape Town during June's FIFA World Cup

Finally, some Googly fun from the Abstract City blog

Book of the Week - Mapping New York

      Mapping New York provides a look at historical and present day New York City through cartography. Black Dog Publishing has recently released this book as a follow up to their previous title, Mapping London.  The publishing company has allowed me to include some images from the book. They have offered me and any readers of this blog copies at a 40% discount--send an e-mail to jess@blackdogonline.com quoting ‘Map of the Week Offer’ as the subject.
        This book starts with a history of the city beginning with a few maps showing a small village at the tip of Manhattan Island extending northwards to the city's wall at present day Wall Street. Urban development and planning maps detail the growth of the city and of its transportation network. Below is part of Oscar Hinrich's "Guide Map of Central Park" from the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. The map was drawn 16 years after the park's opening and two years after its completion.

     Later chapters show maps from artistic and political perspectives. Below is a map titled "Routes of Least Surveillance" courtesy of The Institute of Applied Autonomy and Site-R. The red dots show the locations of CCTV cameras and the green lines indicate walking paths that minimize your exposure to them. Ordinary folks with legitimate reasons to be concerned about these cameras are detailed at the edges of the map.

         Here is a clever ad for the SONY Walkman.  The image is courtesy of Sony and the ad's creators, Saatchi and Saatchi Sydney. The subway stations represent musical groups.

Here is a detail from the map.

      The book concludes with some various "imaginings" of the city from artists, social scientists and others with many more interesting and unique maps.

The Map as Art-Exhibit Opens Tomorrow

The Map as Art opens tomorrow at the Christopher Henry Gallery in New York City. This is a group show curated by Christopher Henry and Katharine Harmon, author of the really great map book "You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination." The show shares its name and accompanies the launch of Harmon's new book. There is an opening reception tomorrow (November 5th) from 6-9 PM.

The gallery is "conveniently located off the Elizabeth Street ramp of the Lower Manhattan Expressway" as illustrated below. Those of you in NYC might actually get the joke.


I did not get any images from the show other than what's on the gallery's site. Below is "Strike Anywhere" by Doug Beube.


Many artists are featured including Joyce Kozloff and Karey Kessler.

Here's a quote from the press release. I'm not sure how much I agree with it but it's an interesting take on mapping.

"In the guise of offering illumination, maps obscure. They purport to bring order to the fundamental chaos of life, promising clarity in the face of flux, and claiming knowledge of the unknowable. In their quest to demarcate our differences, they comfort us even as they give the lie to the notion of common experience."

Map of the Week-Henry Hudson 400

The Henry Hudson 400 Foundation was founded to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Hudson's voyage to North America. He explored New York harbor and sailed up what is now the Hudson River hoping to find the northwest passage to the Pacific. Instead he found Albany.

The Foundation has put together a series of events including a rare maps and documents exhibit; New Amsterdam, The Island at the Center of the World at the South Street Seaport Museum. The exhibit opened September 13th and runs through the end of the year. They also have put together an excellent website with a series of antique maps and data overlaid onto Google's maps.


This map shows Hudson's four voyages. The third one, in dark green took place in 1609. He explored the North Atlantic coast as far south as the Chesapeake Bay. The fourth voyage made it as far as the Hudson and James Bays in 1611 before his crew killed him in a mutiny.



















Historic maps can be overlaid with Google in several ways. This is a direct overlay of a 1625 map of Amsterdam by Balthasar. The background map only shows up because I made a screen capture before it finished loading the Balthasar map.

This 1731 James Lynne plan of lower Manhattan was overlaid using the transparency slider so you can see some of the Google map details in the background.

There is also a side-by-side viewing option as seen for the map "Novi Belgii Novaeque Angliae Nec Non Partis Virginiae Tabula"
by Nicolaes Janzsoon Visscher & Augustine Herman (1651 - 1655)


The site has an "Origins" tab where you can get information about the first kosher butcher or the area's first prostitute. There are also links to other maps around the world from this period of exploration shown under the somewhat confusing "Map Illustrations" heading. Finally, there are a series "Water Challenges" due to rising sea levels. Happy exploring!

Crap of the Week

John Krygier, a professor of Geography at Ohio Wesleyan University and DIY Cartography blogger created the Crestview Road Dog Sh*t Map for his street in Columbus, Ohio. It's kind of ugly but makes a point and I like the little steaming pile symbols. These days I pick up piles like that daily but obviously many dog owners don't bother.

Here's another crappy picture I stole from one of his blog entires - the NY City street grid in grout. OK enough bathroom humor, maybe next week we'll return to "cleaner" subjects. We'll see.

Map of the Week - Subwayman

I'm not nearly New Yorky enough to read the New Yorker but John G. alerted me to the current issue's (June 30, 2008) cover. It's "Subway Man" by Roz Chast. Thank you John.

MOTW #84

This is a map poem by Howard Horowitz called "Manhattan". It originally appeared in the Op-Art section of the New York Times. His art can be found here. Those of you over in Oregon might enjoy his other offering. Also, there's an Idaho poem so something for everyone!