1962 Bollmann View and Map of New York City, Midtown

Billionaire's Row When It Was Still Cool.

The pinnacle of urban cartographic art - this is the 1962 Bollmann axonometric map of midtown Manhattan, in its first issue. This distinctive view presents the heart of New York City at the stylistic peak of the skyscraper era: over half of the world's skyscrapers standing at the time appear within the bounds of this view.

A Closer Look

The map is focused exclusively on midtown Manhattan: from the Hudson to the East River, giving a glimpse of Little West 12th Street in the lower left, to The Lake and Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. The map's orientation to the north-northeast is an aesthetic decision, allowing the city's grid to be oriented at a neat forty-five degrees west of the top of the map. Within that space, the city's buildings are portrayed in seeming photorealistic detail, despite the exaggerated breadth of the city streets. A wide variety of the city's iconic restaurants and businesses are highlighted, from hotels such as the Plaza and the Savoy Hilton, to the offices of steamship lines, such as the Grace Line and the French Line, to the Morgan Library.

Making of the Map

Bollmann created an image of great apparent precision by employing subtle distortion and exaggeration to emphasize scale and clarity. The entire work was first drawn by hand, its preparation boasting the use of over 67,000 photographs, 17,000 of which were aerial. Bollmann widened the streets to keep the image uncluttered; his view dispenses with perspective to maintain a uniform scale for all the buildings and allow comparison of size. The result captures this mighty concentration of towers, presenting each with its uniquely recognizable profile: the iconic Empire State Building, the graceful Art Deco curves of the Chrysler Building, the sleek blade of the United Nations, and the ultra-modern helicopter pad of the Pan Am Building.

Publication History

Bollmann printed this first edition of this view in Germany in 1962. In addition to the changed verso map, there are significant typographical differences between this and the two Barnes-printed American editions of the map, which were executed using a different stone. (The guidebook, oddly, was printed in New York and copyrighted 1963.) Both the 1963 and 1964 New York-printed editions, promoting the New York World's Fair, employ a less subtle palette than this German edition. A further printing of this view, printed on one side in a smaller format and lacking a guidebook, was issued in the 1980s. Examples of these, in various editions, appear to be represented in institutional collections with varying degrees of precision in cataloging.

Cartographer

Herman Bollmann (1911 - 1971) was a German cartographer and map maker active from roughly 1940 to 1970. Before World War II, Bollmann was a well-known woodcarver and engraver based in Braunschweig, Germany. Following the war, Bollmann developed a reputation as a printer of unique three-dimensional maps. Working over a period of 25 years, Bollmann established a reputation as an artistic cartographer, producing over 39 unique projections of various cities in Europe and America. Bollmann revived the 19th-century cartographic technique known as Vogelschaukarten, a way of making three-dimensional axonometric projections. Bollmann and his team relied heavily on aerial cartography to compose distinctive cartographic masterpieces that are coveted by collectors all over the world.   Further Details...

Condition

Excellent. Comes with original guide. Free of mends or splits, very unusual for these.

References

Rumsey 8532.000. Augustyn, R. T., Cohen, P., Manhattan in Maps 1527 - 1995, 152 - 153.