⊕ Click main image below to view enlargements and captions.
Map, New York City, New Map of the Great Metropolis
Map, New York City, New Map of the Great Metropolis
Map, New York City, New Map of the Great Metropolis
Map, New York City, New Map of the Great Metropolis

Map, New York City, The Great Metropolis, Antique, Taintor Brothers, New York,1868 (Sold)

This item is sold. It has been placed here in our online archives as a service for researchers and collectors.

To find similar items in stock, browse or search our currently available items from our menu.

• See our guidelines for the use of images.
• Contact the gallery with purchasing and ordering inquiries, or to offer items for sale.

New Map of the Great Metropolis, Including the Cities of New York, Brooklyn, Jersey City, Hoboken, &c.
Taintor Brothers, New York: 1868
Fisk and Russell, New York City (engravers) (act. 1860s-1870s)
Hand-colored wax engraving
23.75 x 19 inches, overall

The Great Metropolis, a map of New York City, centered on Manhattan Island from the Croton Reservoir south (92nd Street on the West Side and 105th Street on the East Side). The map also includes Astoria and Ravenswood in present-day Queens, much of Brooklyn, and Jersey City, Hoboken, Union Hill, North Weehawken and Hudson City across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Geographic information includes streets, squares, parks, ward numbers, railroads, ferry routes and numbered boat slips, many labeled with the names of shipping lines. Manhattan and Hudson City are tinted pink; parks, cemeteries, islands and the Brooklyn Navy Yard are tinted green. The map of Central Park shows the Olmstead and Vaux plan; park construction was completed five years later. The present site of the Central Park Zoo is labeled “Museum.” Footprints of institutional buildings on Blackwell’s Island (now known as Roosevelt Island) are labeled Lunatic Asylum, Work House, Alms House, Penitentiary and Hospital. The map was originally published as a folding insert to Walling’s Route and City Guides — City of New York (H.F. Walling, The City of New York. A Complete Guide, Taintor Brothers & Co., New York, 1867).  This guide book included descriptions of places of interest and a street directory, with numerous local advertisements.

Product description continues below.

Description

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 and Fisk and Russell. 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 they expanded into schoolbook publishing. Joseph Lord Taintor retired in 1880 due to poor health and died the following year.

Fisk and Russell was a New York City engraver of maps using the wax engraving process active in the 1860s and the 1870s. The company was an offshoot of the Jewett & Chandler Company. They produced maps for the Gaylord Watson Company and Taintor Brothers.

Full publication information: “Published by Taintor Brothers, 678 Broadway. 1868. Eng’d by Fisk & Russell, 43 Chatham St., N.Y.”

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.

Additional information

Century

19th Century