1945 Hagstrom Map of New York City and its Tourist Attractions

This is a 1945 Hagstrom map of New York City. Highlighting sites throughout the city, many with small pictorial icons, the map caters to the casual sightseer by marking tourist sites as well the more dedicated visitor, in chronicling nightclubs and theaters.

The Map

Hagstrom - already known for his judicious distortion of street size for the sake of clarity and legibility - has outdone himself here by stripping away all but New York's 'principal streets.' The space this afforded him has been used for the presentation of important landmark buildings, and even pictorial representation of key neighborhoods (note the musicians and dancers in Harlem, the painter at an easel in Greenwich Village, and a mustachioed braumeister at the corner of Lexington and 86th, then still the center of New York's German immigrant community.) 122 sites are numerically marked, keyed to a list below the map. Bridges and tunnels are drawn with either automobiles or trains. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel is a dashed line: it would not open until 1950. At the bottom of the image is a westward-oriented bird's-eye view of the city skyline, labeling Downtown, Midtown, and key features of the skyline employing the same number system used in the map above.

The Index

The margins of the map are filled with useful features for visitors, in particular those falling outside the bounds of the map, or not evident upon it. Airports and bus terminals are listed (but not railway stations, which presumably were sufficiently prominent on the map itself). Amusement parks and beaches, municipal buildings, churches and synagogues, night and supper clubs, colleges, department stores, and theaters are all noted as well. It is gratifying to note that not everything shown required purchases or paid admittance: views, skyscrapers, monuments, and even general neighborhoods are listed so that any visitor might be able to find things to do or see within their means.

Publication History and Census

Although the map does not bear an official date of publication, the rapidly-shifting addresses for 'Night and Supper Clubs' bears the notation 'as of October 1945'. We are aware of another edition that bears the notation 'as of Jan 1, 1949' for nightclub addresses. OCLC lists one example of this map, bearing the same 'as of October 1945' notation with respect to the nightclubs, at the Newberry Library.