Description
The map was published as a folding insert to Taintor’s Route and City Guides — City of New York (The City of New York. A Complete Guide, Taintor Brothers & Co., New York, 1867). This guide book includes descriptions of places of interest in Manhattan and a street directory, with numerous local advertisements. The map is easily removable from the guide for framing, without damaging either. There are other known editions of this map and guide around the same date, variously giving credit also to H.F. Walling.
Taintor Brothers was a New York City publisher of city, steamboat and railroad guidebooks. For the map portions, they worked with other companies, such as H.F. Walling (cartographer and publisher) and Fisk and Russell (engravers). The firm was founded by Joseph Lord Taintor (1835-1881). After graduating from Yale University in 1860, he went into publishing with his uncle and brother in Connecticut. In 1866, he formed a copartnership with his younger brother Charles. The following year they began publishing a successful series of guidebooks in New York. In the 1870s the company expanded into schoolbook publishing. Joseph Lord Taintor retired in 1880 due to poor health and died the following year.
Full publication information: “Published by Taintor Brothers, 678 Broadway. Engraved for Walling’s New York City Guide.”
Condition: Generally very good with the usual overall light toning, wear, soft creases. Folds as issued, some with minor separations and additional toning along the fold lines and with minor openings at the fold intersections. Covers very good with light wear. Seller can have the map professionally flattened and backed with Japanese tissue for framing for an additional expense to the Purchaser of approximately $250.
References:
“Obituary: Joseph Lord Taintor.” Publisher’s Weekly. No. 507. 1 October 1881. pp. 431-432. Online at Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=JBQYAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA431 (16 May 2014).
Ristow, Walter W. American Maps and Mapmakers: Commercial Cartography in the Nineteenth Century. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1985. pp. 335 and 473.
