The City of New York, is a map and an ode to New York City and its people. The map title also serves grammatically as the lead in to a longer narrative about the city and immediately focuses our attention on the topic in print: "The City of New York...is 310 square miles of rock-bottom land, criss-crossed by 5,000 miles of streets and largely bounded by its 580 miles of waterfront. Here about half of its 7,500,000 inhabitants were born and here most of them work. Last year their income was $6,200,000,000." This map, published by Fortune in its July, 1939 issue is also an urban history and an urban planner's view of how the city has been built. Richard Edes Harrison, 20th c. American cartographer, artist and intellectual whose own education was in zoology, chemistry and architecture presents New York City in many dimensions.1/ His work in this map marked the beginning of an extraordinary career in cartography of a type and style new to American map making. 2/
The colorful map of New York City in its entirety is color coded to indicate the type of property use and development as defined by the map key, which sits just below the map title. The key itself is unusual in its format as a chart, with colored boxes defining types of land use. The top left quadrant of the map sheet contains another map The Lower Half of Manhattan In Detail also decoded with a map key indicating symbols for theatres, stores, businesses and apartment houses. The key suggests cultural land uses, tourism and supporting business uses. In the lower right corner of the map sheet is yet a third and fourth color coded rendering of land use in the City of New York. Each of these stylistically different maps are explained by keys titled Day population and Night Population that guide the reader to yet another dimension of land use - time of day. Edes places the map's decorative compass rose in the Lower Bay, capturing a pocket watch sized view of the New York Metropolitan Area as the urban, financial and cultural heart of the abutting states of the entire region.
The back of the map contains a four-page layout of Fortune's special issue about New York City, its people and the 1939 World's Fair. Two of the pages are fine black and white photographs: Lewis W. Hine's image of immigrants passing up the steps of the building on Ellis Island two of whom look to the camera with the subtitle "The Ragged Regiments of Europe" climbed through Ellis Island to America in 1890...1900...1910" and in the top right quadrant a contemporary action photograph of Manhattan at night, stylistically capturing the bright lights, sky scrapers and 24/7 identity of this city built literally, culturally and economically by waves of immigration, reaching back in fact even to the multiple colonial eras.
The magazine's celebration of the 1939 World Fair is humanistic just as Mayor LaGuardia's proud opening remarks at the New York World Fair urged visitors to see the entire city as New York's "booth" at the fair. The editors of Fortune explain their goal for the reader: "...to present a man-sized view of the Fair's Greatest Exhibit, and the reader will find it in the following pages..." below which is the magazine's four-part table of contents. As we read Richard Edes Harrison's map The City of New York today, our appreciation of New York City as a living organism, and of the generations of people who contributed to the city's distinct identity gives way to a desire to use the map as a guide to explore, 84 years later, as best we can, at many levels, the places so artfully represented on Harrison's map that changed the way Americans came to rely upon and enjoy cartography.3/
This map is held in many institutional collections.
Notes:
1. Richard Edes Harrison (March 11, 1901-January 5, 1994), American born and a graduate of Yale College and Yale University School of Fine Arts, is an American map maker, artist, scientific illustrator and through his graphic art an educator about how to view and think about our world through maps.
2. Richard Edes Harrison maps and papers collection (Library of Congress Finding Aid)
3. for additional reading, please see The New Republic and discussions elsewhere of the paradigm shifting impact of Richard Edes Harrison's cartography and the role of maps in American society. Richard Edes Harrison (Author of Look at the World; The Fortune Atlas for World Strategy)