Description
The map’s designer, Edwin J. Schruers, is also credited as the copyright holder in the lower margin. This particular example also indicates in the left lower margin that it is the third printing. Other examples of this map are known without the third printing indication in the lower left (presumed first or second printing). In addition, numbered examples are known in an edition of 300 (presumed first printing), so stated in the lower left margin followed by the edition number and signature of Schruers.
The following dedication, with quaint spelling and using the old-fashioned convention of printing “v” for “u,” serves as the border:
After God had carried us safe to New England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our lively-hood, rear’d convenient places for Gods worship, and settled the civill government. One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministery to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust. 1636 — Dedicated to the graduates of Harvard University in commemoration of the tercentenary of its founding–1936.
Edwin J. Schruers was an American architect. He was born in Oil City, Pennsylvania, and received a degree in architecture from Allegheny College. He later taught at Harvard, and produced a pictorial map of the campus, A Prospect of Harvard University and of Radcliffe College, in 1935. In 1938, he designed the set for the W.P.A. Federal Theatre production of George Bernard Shaw’s On the Rocks on Broadway. From 1940 to 1945 Schruers served as a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. He then spent several years traveling and living in South America, eventually settling in Berkeley, California, where he had his own architectural firm. Another example of his Harvard-Radcliffe map is in the collection of the Library of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.
Full publication information: Tercentenary Issue on Permanent Paper — Third Printing. Copyright, 1935, by Edwin J. Schruers. The Merrymount Press, Boston.
Condition: Generally very good with the usual light overall toning, soft creases, and minor wear. Margins full — often on extant examples of this map they are trimmed to, or within, the black border.
References:
Farran, Don. “Recollections of the Federal Theatre.” Books at Iowa 18. University of Iowa. April 1973. Online at University of Iowa Special Collections. http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/Bai/farran.htm (25 July 2006).
Mitchell, Priscilla. “Re: Harvard-Radcliffe Prospect.” E-mail. 29 May 2007.
Smith, Murphy D. “Realms of Gold: A Catalogue of Maps in the Library of the American Philosophical Society. Part II: Printed Maps — New England.” American Philosophical Society. http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/mole/r/rogprintedmaps10b1.htm (25 July 2006).
