Maps can tell us all kinds of things about how others have viewed and shaped the world – from the borders of ancient empires to the layout of your neighborhood street grid. Today, spatial data commonly powers the maps and applications we use to access basic information about the places we inhabit: opening an app …
There are some maps that, at first look (or second, or one-hundredth), seem to offer more questions than answers. It can surely be said that the map of nationalities in New York City, part of a series of maps from the Tenement House Committee of 1894, is one such curiosity. Looking closer at its historical …
Many of us have heard the tale of Mrs. O’Leary’s infamous cow as the driver of one of Chicago’s greatest disasters. Whether or not the beast did in fact start the blaze may never be known, but the fact remains that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 decimated the city over a three day period …
With the first liftoff of Orville and Wilbur Wright into the sky in 1903, the world dramatically changed in an instant, and it did not take long for the implications of flight to be applied to the world of cartography. The value of aerial mapping became readily apparent with the advent of World War I. …
The most heavily used collection in the Geography and Map Division are the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, a collection of large-scale, building level maps, dating from 1867 to the present which depict the commercial, industrial, and residential sections of some 12,000 cities and towns in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The Sanborn collection includes about …
At 5:12 a.m. on a typical Wednesday morning, most San Franciscans are probably sleeping. Perhaps they are just brewing their first cup of coffee, or gearing up for a jog. Maybe they are just stepping foot out the door on their way to work. Nothing out of the ordinary. But 115 years ago at 5:12 …
Sponsored by the Leventhal Map Center of the Boston Public Library and the MacLean Collection Map Library in Chicago, IL, the Library of Congress is pleased to announce its participation entitled Mapping A World of Cities in a joint project with the American Geographical Society (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), the David Rumsey Map Center (Stanford Libraries, California), …
Celebrated as a state holiday in Utah, Pioneer Day commemorates the first members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints entering the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Since the foundation of the Church in 1830, Latter-day Saints were faced with persecution and driven out of every community they started in New …
Washington, D.C., was established as the “permanent seat of the Federal Government” by the passage of the Residence Act in 1790. This act allowed President George Washington to select the site for the new city anywhere along the banks of the Potomac River between its junction with the Shenandoah River, near present day Harpers Ferry, …
