Month: July 2018

Copy of Ratzer’s Map of Colonial New York Auctioned for $150,000

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Plan of the City of New York, in North America, 1776. Map, 123 × 89 cm. New York Public Library.

A 1776 map of New York City sold at auction in New York last April for $150,000, the Daily Mail reported at the time. The map is the second edition of the more famous, and rare, 1770 map showing the work of surveyor Bernard Ratzer. It was published in England, and was apparently put to use by British officers during the American Revolution. The New York Public Library’s copy has been digitized and is available online. [WMS]

Previously: Map of Colonial New Jersey Rediscovered.

Matthew Blackett’s Transit Map of Canada

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Toronto Star talks with Matthew Blackett, who for the past six years has been working on a transit map of Canada. In the figurative sense, not the literal sense: this isn’t a map of Canadian transit networks. Like many maps that draw inspiration from transit network diagrams, Blackett’s map imagines its subject as a giant city: it shows Canadian towns and cities as stops along transit lines that treat regions as neighbourhoods. (Thanks, Dwight.)