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Map, United States, Pictorial, New Yorker’s Idea, Daniel Wallingford, Vintage Print, c. 1930

$450

Daniel K. Wallingford
A New Yorker’s Idea of the United States of America
Daniel K. Wallingford, 452 West 144th Street, New York, New York: c. 1939 to 1940s
Print, uncolored
7 x 9.5 inches ruled border (approximate)
9.5 x 12.25 inches overall (approximate)
$450

A humorous pictorial map of the United States from the perspective of a chauvinistic New Yorker, showing New York State largely exaggerated in size. The rest of the country — with a few key exceptions — is treated as largely irrelevant, unimportant, and/or unknown. On this particular example of the map, the New York World’s Fair is shown, indicating a date of 1939 to the early 1940s.

Product description continues below.

Description

New Yorker’s Idea shows New York State in oversized proportion to the entire country. A text box in the upper left corner presents the concept: “The City of New York is unique — it is a nation within a NATION. Its inhabitants, of which there are some 7,000,000, are called NEW YORKERS. This MAP is presented, after patient research, as a composite of the NEW YORKERS’ ideas concerning THE UNITED STATES…” In the map, place names throughout the other states are often incorrect or fictitious, satirizing a New Yorker’s lack of knowledge and interest in other parts of the country. For example, Minneapolis and Indianapolis are humorously shown together in Michigan as “The Twin Cities,” and the Southeast is dominated by an oversized Florida (where New Yorker’s vacation or retire), with four rivers in Florida all labeled “Swanee River.” Moreover,  California is divided in thirds consisting of San Francisco, California and Hollywood and other geography shows similar inaccuracies and distorted proportions throughout the country. The map is in the Art Deco taste, with additional details such as ships in the oceans, and various views and images in the borders such as the Empire State Building and a Fifth Avenue Coach bus.

Daniel K. Wallingford created, copyrighted and sometimes self-published A New Yorker’s Idea of the United States of America, and This Map Presents a Bostonian’s Idea of the United States of America. Each of these two famous pictorial maps shows the United States from a humorous and satirical local perspective. The maps have been variously issued over an extended period of time, starting in the mid 1930s, in a complex publication and reissue history that is not yet fully known or documented. This is complicated by the fact that the maps rarely have a date imprinted on them.

Some information on early publications can be gleaned from an extant letter in the Rumsey Collection, dated September 2, 1935, from Daniel K. Wallingford, 119 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston to a Mrs. G.W. Wade. The letter promoted the sale of “a revised edition” of A New Yorker’s Idea, available in three sizes, 8.5 x 6.5 inches, 12.5 x 10 inches, and 20 x 15 inches. The larger size, it was stated, was available mounted on board, hand colored and varnished. Accordingly, it can be concluded that A New Yorker’s Idea was issued 1935 or earlier. Another way to date the maps is whether the New York World’s Fair (1939-1940) is indicated on A New Yorker’s Idea or not. For example, on an extant medium-size example of this map, with address indicated at 222 Marlboro Street, Boston, the Fair is not shown indicating a date before 1939. The only known date on any of these maps is text printed on the back of an example of A New Yorker’s Idea published as a promotional item by the Columbia University Press; it states that the map was published as a “reissue” in 1937 due to its popularity the prior year.

Different issues of both maps are known with a variety of different addresses for Wallingford, though their sequence and dates associated with any one address are unknown. Extant examples of both maps also are known that bear the imprint of the Columbia University Bookstore, New York, instead of Wallingford’s name. There are other editions as well, such as Bostonian’s Idea  published in color by Margaret G. Wallingford — presumably a successor to the rights to the map — in Chicago, in the early 1960s Alternate versions of these maps were also later redone by apparently unrelated publishers in different sizes and formats; it is not known whether these were authorized editions.

Condition: Recently professionally cleaned and deacidified, with only light remaining toning, wear, handling.

References:

“A Bostonian’s Idea of the United States of America.”  Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library.  http://maps.bpl.org/details_10494/ (21 July 2009).

Harmon, Katharine. You Are Here. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004, p. 102 (illustrating a colored version of A New Yorker’s Idea from the collection of George Glazer Gallery).

“Letter and Ad: From D.K. Wallingford, advertising various size prints and costs of the map…” David Rumsey Map Collection. 2018.
https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~290267~90061919:Letter-and-Ad–From-D-K–Wallingfor (22 January 2018).