1931 Harrison Pictorial Bird's Eye View of New York City

HIghlights all of New York City's landmarks: the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and Times Square.

This is a 1931 Richard Edes Harrison pictorial bird's eye view of New York City. Oriented towards the north, the map depicts the city from the Hudson River to Queens and from Westchester County to Thirtieth Street. Wonderfully illustrated with numerous buildings drawn in profile, the Empire State Building, Macy's the Metropolitan Opera House, and the Chrysler Building take center stage, along with the Herald Square Hotel, which is shaded in red. Both the Pennsylvania Station (commonly referred to as Penn Station) and the Grand Central Terminal are present, along with Madison Square Garden (then located between Eighth and Ninth Avenue not far from Times Square), Carnegie Hall, and Rockefeller Center, which is only roughly shown, as it was still under construction. Central Park is beautifully illustrated and Columbus Circle, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Metropolitan Museum encircle the park. The Queensboro Bridge, the Tri-Borough Bridge, and the George Washington Bridge are illustrated in detail. Outside Manhattan, Astoria and Long Island City are labeled in Queens, and Yankee Stadium is illustrated in profile in the Bronx. The Boston Post Road is drawn and labeled as well.

This map was drawn by Richard Edes Harrison and published in 1931.

Cartographer

Richard Edes Harrison (March 11, 1901 - January 5, 1994) was an American cartographer, scientific illustrator, and designer based in New York City, active principally from the 1930s through the 1970s. His journalistic maps combined unconventional viewpoints, expressive relief shading, and carefully controlled graphic design to explain international geography to a broad readership. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, he graduated from Yale College in 1923 with a major in zoology and a minor in chemistry. After working as a scientific illustrator and architectural draftsman, he entered Yale's School of Fine Arts in 1926 and received an architecture degree in 1930. With architectural work scarce during the Depression, he moved to New York and worked in interior and industrial design. A 1932 Time map assignment launched his career in magazine cartography; he later became a staff cartographer for Fortune before returning to freelance work in 1938, maintaining important associations with Fortune and Life. During World War II, Harrison challenged the familiar north-up, Mercator-centered view of world affairs through polar projections, orthographic views, and oblique perspectives that emphasized the Earth's curvature and the proximity of continents in an age of aviation. His Three Approaches to the U.S. (1940) and The World Divided (1941) made American strategic vulnerability visually immediate, supporting an internationalist understanding of the conflict rather than geographical isolation. His influential Look at the World: The Fortune Atlas for World Strategy appeared in 1944. Although admired for their explanatory power, his departures from conventional orientation, scale, and projection also attracted criticism from professional geographers and cartographers. Harrison taught at Syracuse University from 1945 to 1949 and consulted for government agencies, including the Office of Strategic Services, the State Department, and the U.S. Geological Survey. His later publications included The Ginn World Atlas (1963), and he contributed shaded-relief cartography to The National Atlas of the United States of America. He received the American Geographical Society's Miller Medal in 1968. An enthusiastic birdwatcher with a sustained interest in Central Park conservation, Harrison died in New York City on January 5, 1994; the Library of Congress acquired his professional and personal papers in 1995.   Further Details...

Condition

Very good. Even overall toning. Closed tear extending one inch into printed area from right margin professionally repaired on verso.Manuscript inscription in upper right corner. Text and illustration on verso.

References

Cornell University, Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection, 2270.01. OCLC 45751129.