Framed City Maps

City maps can be fascinating in their own right as pieces of artwork. They are intricate, showing hours of work by the mapmaker, detailing every street on a city, as well as the landforms, and famous buildings. Cities have been around for centuries, and so have their maps. We will take a look at framed city maps.

The framed city map sketch of “Plan of the City of New York City” by Bernard Ratzer is an historical view of New York before it became the Big Apple. The plans show a very small part of New York, which appears to be more farmland than city. In fact all around is nature and untamed areas, before urban sprawl set in and covered all the forestry in steel and concrete. At the bottom is a view of the harbour, which has boats of the time on the surface. It is very quaint.