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Category: Maps

A brownish map with a faint outline of the eastern and Gulf Coasts of what is now the United States.

The (Newly Revealed) Wonders of a 16th Century Portolan Chart of the North American Coast

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

New details about early European explorations along the North American east coast have been gleaned from a 16th-century portolan chart by the Library's Preservation and Research Testing Division. Using multispectral imaging and other techniques, Library staff has discovered multiple place names on the chart that could not be seen by the naked eye.

Head and shoulders portrait of Ida B. Wells, based on a photograph. She's facing right, hair swept up in a bun, a stern expression on her face

Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Maps of American Racism

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Ida B. Wells was 30 years old in 1892, living in Memphis and working as a newspaper editor, when a mob lynched one of her friends. Distraught, the pioneering journalist set out to document the stories of lynching victims and disprove a commonly asserted justification — that the murders were a response to rape. Wells’ …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

New Webinar Series: Discover the Library’s Ancient Mesoamerican Manuscripts

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

The Library of Congress holds three of fewer than 100 surviving Mesoamerican pictorial manuscripts that predate 1600: the Huexotzinco Codex (1531), the Oztoticpac Lands Map (1540) and the newly acquired Codex Quetzalecatzin (1570–95). On three Wednesdays this spring, starting on March 14, John Hessler of the Library’s Geography and Map Division will host webinars exploring …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

New Online: Mapping the U.S., Block by Block

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Located midway between Tucson and Phoenix, Casa Grande, Arizona, now has a population of about 50,000, making it fairly small by today’s standards for cities. But it’s a lot bigger than it used to be. In 1898, only 200 people lived alongside the Southern Pacific railroad tracks there. Besides scattered dwellings, Casa Grande had a …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Gallery Talk: The Libertine Life of Abel Buell

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Kimberli Curry, exhibition director in the Interpretive Programs Office. Library of Congress specialists often give presentations about ongoing Library exhibitions. We are pleased to introduce a new blog series, “Galley Talks,” featuring content from these presentations. This first post relates to the exhibition “Mapping a New Nation: Abel Buell’s Map of …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

New Book: “Picturing America: The Golden Age of Pictorial Maps”

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Designed to educate, amuse or advertise, pictorial maps were a clever and colorful component of print culture in the mid-20th century, often overlooked in studies of cartography. A new book published by the Library of Congress in association with the University of Chicago Press, “Picturing America: The Golden Age of Pictorial Maps,” by Stephen J. …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Rare Map on Display at Library Scored Some “Firsts”

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Engraver Abel Buell “came out of nowhere,” at least in terms of cartography, when he printed a United States map in 1784. “He’d never done a map before,” says Edward Redmond of the Library’s Geography and Map Division. Nonetheless, Buell set records. He was the first U.S. citizen to print a map of the United …