1914 Hammond Road Map of Long Island w/ New York City

Parkways, turnpikes, motor roads.

A highly detailed 1918 C.S. Hammond double-sided road map of Long Island and New York City. It demonstrates the transformation of Long Island from rural farmland and forest to a suburban continuation of the New York metro area, a transformation facilitated by the rapid development of highways.

A Closer Look

One side of the map illustrates New York City, Nassau County, and the western portion of Suffolk County, depicting from New Jersey east to Smithtown and Central Islip. Red lines highlight major highways. The street grid in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx is illustrated, along with certain neighborhoods in Queens, including Long Island City, Flushing, and Corona. Towns farther east on Long Island are labeled, many of which have small street grid illustrations as well. The Long Island Railway is depicted, as are long-distance trolleys or electric railway lines. Circled numbers on the map correspond to a list of golf clubs on Long Island at top-right.

A map of eastern Suffolk County occupies the other side of the map. Major roads are illustrated and are differentiated between 'good roads' and 'fair roads'. Riverhead, Southold, and Southampton are illustrated. An inset along the upper border continues along the South Shore and focuses on East Hampton. A second, smaller inset continues the North Shore and illustrates Orient Point, Gardiners Bay, and Plum Island.

Before the LIE

The first express roadways for automobiles on Long Island opened in the years before this map's publication, most notably the Vanderbilt Parkway (here as the Long Island Motor Parkway), privately built by William Kissam Vanderbilt II in 1908 for racing purposes. The Jericho Turnpike (NY 25), Hempstead Turnpike (NY 24), and other turnpikes and parkways appear here. By the 1920s and 1930s, a growing bureaucracy was required at the local, county, and state levels to manage the rapidly changing landscape of Long Island. Deeply involved with such efforts was Robert Moses, later a famous (or infamous) urban planner, who began his career as President of the Long Island State Park Commission. Among his greatest impacts on Long Island was the prioritization of automobile parkways, making the suburban sprawl of the mid-20th century possible.

Publication History and Census

This map was created and published by C.S. Hammond in 1918. Several other editions of the map exist from the 1910s and 1920s, all of which are scarce. The current edition is listed among the institutional holdings of the New York State Library, the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, and Stony Brook University.

Cartographer

Caleb Stillson Hammond (November 27, 1862 - December 14, 1929) was an American map publisher and printing entrepreneur active in New York City during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the founder of C. S. Hammond and Company. Born in Rush, New York, he gained experience in the map trade as a sales representative for Rand McNally before establishing his own publishing concern in Brooklyn in 1900 and incorporating it in 1901. Early cartographic publications included folded maps of Panama and of Florida's steamship routes and railroad connections, both issued in 1903, followed by Hammond's Atlas of New York City and the Metropolitan District in 1907. These publications established two enduring branches of the business: maps of places attracting public attention and commissioned cartography for commercial customers. The firm developed an extensive range of world, historical, school, and thematic atlases, as well as separate maps and globes, and supplied cartographic material for other publishers' encyclopedias, dictionaries, religious works, and textbooks. Its metropolitan mapping included street and transit maps, freight-delivery maps, and maps of railroad terminal facilities. Hammond died in New York City on December 14, 1929; the business continued under family ownership and relocated to Maplewood, New Jersey, in the early 1950s. His grandson, Caleb D. Hammond, Jr. (1915 - 2006), became president in 1948. The company's assets were acquired by Langenscheidt Publishers in 1999, and in December 2002, the American Map Corporation, part of the Langenscheidt Publishing Group, donated the Hammond archives to the Library of Congress.   Further Details...

Condition

Very good. Some wear along fold lines and uneven toning in margins. Adhesive residue on one side in the margin where the map was attached to cover, which is included.

References

OCLC 1306240001.