The pictorial elements of artist Richard Lufkin's colorful The Central Part of Boston Massachusetts have been assembled to create a kaleidoscope effect rarely found in a map. The result is a sense of movement throughout the city. These elements consist of the large street plan view of downtown Boston, drawn as white streets on a soothing pink ground where buildings project from the street plan in seemingly random axonometric orientations, some facing forward, others tipped skyward, and yet other building foundations leaning downhill or uphill. Framing this scene are three vignettes each in their own panels, each filled with scenery and prominent architectural landmarks either visible from Boston or from which Boston itself is visible. The dominant vignette runs along the entire top of the map and offers vistas of the neighborhoods to the north of downtown. The other two vignettes, also framed as individual rectangular panels, are in the lower left and lower right corners of the map sheet. The Charles River Basin is drawn in plan within the primary map, but it also participates in this graphic field day, as sail boats catch the breeze and move in many directions within the bend in the Charles that is framed by MIT and its great Dome to the north and the Esplanade to the south. A compass rose floats like an air balloon just off center in the map.
The vista looking northward from the center of Boston includes Watertown, and the Perkins School for the Blind. The Harvard College campus, Stadium, Business School and Widener Library are drawn in miniature. Somerville is featured along with the Old Powder House. In Medford, the Tufts University campus is visible with the Lawrence Observatory. Immediately to the northeast, Charlestown, the Bunker Hill Monument, the Frigate Constitution, Old Ironsides is docked at the Charlestown Naval Yard.
Within the center of Boston, its primary cultural halls, Symphony Hall and Horticultural Hall are landmarks. So too are many churches, hotels and the Harvard Club. Temple Israel of Boston is drawn on the map. Many 19th c. buildings since removed when the City of Boston undertook to widen streets are still architectural landmarks, such as the Mechanics Building. Frederick Law Olmsted's enduring vision of a living landscape in the city frame central Boston with the Fenway, Boston Public Garden, and the Esplanade. Art work appears on the map, including the Abraham Lincoln emancipation bronze sculpture.
As the title of the map is the "Boston Elevated Railway", the train, bus and streetcar lines are drawn and labeled, as are the stations. This 1930 city street plan notably does not include highways as the primary means of transportation is pedestrian then moves from sidewalks, to buses, underground trolleys and trains. The bus routes are numbered and the artist has drawn buses trundling along their routes. The location of underground stations are named. On the verso of the map is a street guide and public transit instructions.
The map is also a historic walking tour. The Boston Tea Party site is labeled. Faneuil Hall and the U.S. Customs House are shown in a bird's eye view. Outdoor sculpture is identified throughout the city, including the Civil War regiment honored near the Massachusetts State House, the Shaw Memorial.
The vignette in the lower left corner offers a view westward to Newton, including buildings of the Boston College campus. Harvard Medical School buildings and the Hospital are prominent on the map. To the southwest, the vignette provides a culturally rich view of West Roxbury and the West Roxbury Children's Museum. Franklin Park and the Lion House, Bird House, Aviary and Bear's Den are drawn on the map from a pedestrian's sight line. Sweeping south and eastward, the map locates the Great Blue Hill Reservation.
The vignette in the lower right corner describes the Boston neighborhoods to the southeast. Boston City Hospital, the Mass. Memorial Homeopathic Hospitals and neighborhoods in Roxbury and South Boston, near the South Boston Beach and Strandway give a sense of life in Boston on the waters of Boston Harbor. Boston as a port city comes into focus in this vignette, where the artist has drawn the Commonwealth Pier, the Fish Pier, Drydock, the U.S. Army Base and from the 19th and 18th century Castle Island and Fort Independence and an Aquarium.
These pictures of Boston and immediately surrounding towns are held together within an art decor black and white frame. The angled black and white lozenge shapes in the map's frame move visually around the pictorial map in a way that mimics how the buses move along their routes, the train and elevated move along the track, and how we might imagine passengers in the subway moving beneath the city. All in all, this is one of Geo. Walker publishing company's most artistic and still practical maps.