Description
Rosalind Howe Sturges [Allen] was an artist and architectural cartographer known for her illustrated pictorial maps that place historic buildings in a geographic context. Born Rosalind Howe, she was the daughter of an antiques dealer and an architect, and became interested in historic architecture at a young age. Sturges (her married name, which she used professionally for most of her life) made her first pictorial map of Vassar College the year she graduated, in 1928. Most of her pictorial maps were commissions and depicted locations in New England and the Mid-Atlantic region, including Annapolis, Maryland; Bristol and Providence, Rhode Island; Chestnut Hill, Fairmount Park, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Blackstone Valley, Deerfield, Groton, Hingham, Princeton, and Worcester, Massachusetts; and the campuses of Wellesley College (1943) and Vassar College (1928). Among her major bird’s-eye view maps is her wall map Philadelphia (1971) “whose architecture reflects three centuries of cultural amity,” published by Girard Bank. Perhaps her best-known map was New England’s Architectural Heritage, 1636-1886 for Yankee magazine’s special U.S. Bicentennial issue in 1976. Widowed in 1975, Howe married her second husband Dana Allen in 1983. Today Vassar College houses her papers, including the preparatory drawings, photographs and research materials for her maps.
Inscriptions: Copyright 1943 by R.H. Sturges, and published by Hathaway House, Wellesley, Mass. Litho in U.S.A. by Winthrop Printing and Offset Co., Inc., Boston, Mass.
References:
“Guide to the Rosalind Howe Sturges Allen Papers ca. 1928-1999.”Archives and Special Collections Library, Vassar College Libraries. July 2011. http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/findingaids/howe_rosalind.html (29 May 2020).
Patkus, Ronald D. “Treasured Maps: Rosalind Howe ’28.” Vassar College Alumnae/i Quarterly. Spring 2002. Online at: http://vq.vassar.edu/issues/2002/02/features/treasured-maps.html (20 January 2014).
“Philadelphia. Rosalind H. Sturges.” David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~272114~90045917:Philadelphia–Rosalind-H–Sturges?sort=Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No&qvq=q:sturges;sort:Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No;lc:RUMSEY~8~1&mi=3&trs=8 (29 May 2020).
