Description
The “Explanation” section includes observations by Fahey “About Greenwich Village,” including the following:
…In the City itself, the Village is known as a very pleasant and interesting place to live which, incidentally, has a strong community spirit and a passionate devotion to tradition. It is the only place in New York City where relatively large numbers of quaint old buildings are still in use. It is also a marvelous place to shop where all sorts of hand-made items…are available, often at very reasonable prices.
But to the tourist, the visitor from the other boroughs, the kid home from college, the Village is a playground, a place where he can “let his hair down”, where he can listen to poetry or folk singing in a coffee house, see an off-Broadway play, or hear some first class jazz. Finally, the Village is a place where people never seem to tire of entertaining themselves by conversation, by taking walks, by window-shopping, or by just sitting in the Square and looking at the “Beat Types” and each other.
Outsiders are frequently surprised and sometimes shocked by the informal manner and mode of dress of some of the more Bohemian Villagers, but even the casual visitor is touched by the change of pace in the Village, the stress upon individuality, and upon personal freedom, so that he may have come to the Village out of curiosity only to find himself returning again and again for deeper satisfaction.
Lawrence Fahey was a cartographer active in the second half of the 20th century. He received his early training in 1943 as an apprentice map draftsman at the Army Map Service in Washington, D.C. After World War II, he earned a B.A. degree in geography from Clark University, followed by a master’s degree in geography from Ohio State University in 1954. In between earning his degrees he worked for the Air Force and the Florida State Road Department. He returned to New York in the mid 1950s. His Map of the Greenwich Village Section of New York City was three and a half years in the making. By 1960, when that map was published, he was a Fellow of the American Geographical Society, a member of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping, the Australian Institute of Cartographers and the American Society of Photogrammetry. One of his lasting contributions to cartography is the Fahey map projection method for world maps, which he developed in 1975. He also contributed analytical maps to official reports by governmental agencies such as the Organization of American States and the U.S. Department of Justice. His cartography is prominently featured in Edward R. Tufte’s classic work on information graphics, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983).
Full publication information: L. Fahey, Village Station, New York 14, New York.
Condition: Recently professionally cleaned and deacidified and the original folds (as was issued) flattened as backed on Japanese paper, with only light remaining toning, handling wear.
References:
Fahey, Lawrence. “Explanation [of the Map of the Greenwich Village Section of New York City].” New York: Lawrence Fahey, 1960.
“Map Projections.” Dundas Data Visualization. 2006-2008. http://support.dundas.com/OnlineDocumentation/WebMap2005/MapProjections.html (19 November 2008).
