On February 7, we hosted From The Vault: For the Love of Maps!

Maps have so much to offer—from the rich history behind their creation and visual perspectives of familiar places to the depth of information they communicate and so much more. While the staff at the Leventhal Center have a special place in our hearts for all of our maps, there are just a few that each of us love the tiniest bit more than the others.

In this From The Vault collections showing, we took a look at the personal favorites of the staff at the Leventhal Center and the multitude of reasons these maps have captured our attention amongst our collection of over 250,000 maps.

Newton Horace Winchell, A geological map of the Black Hills (1875)

Selected by Julia Williams, Gallery and Communications Coordinator

Portraying the Black Hills (also known as the Six Grandfathers) mountain range of South Dakota and Wyoming, this map was created in 1875 during a time of major conflict in this region. Just a few years prior in 1868, the US government had signed a treaty “exempting the Black Hills from all non-indigenous settlement forever”. However, when gold was found in the area 6 years later, the US government conquered the Black Hills and forcibly relocated the Lakota people who were indigenous to the area.

50 years later, work began on this landmark on the sacred mountain range and in 1941, Mount Rushmore was opened to the public. Featuring the faces of 4 US presidents to represent the first 150 years of American history, the site now receives more than 2 million visitors a year.

“This is my (current) favorite map in the collection because it’s so visually stunning with all the different bands of color, but primarily for the history that underlies this location. It reminds me that maps are simply a snapshot of a much larger picture of what’s going on in the world.”

William M. Coombs, Map showing the sources of some of the offensive odors perceived in Boston, 1878 (1878)

Selected by Emily Bowe, Assistant Director

This map from 1878 was made by the Boston Board of Health, at a time when the growing city was confronting issues about waste and public health. In red hatching, you’ll see “mud-sewage flats” depicted in once-marshy areas of the city. You may also notice the numbered red dots along the edges of the wharves and land, indicating locations of sewage outlets. The makers of the map have drawn red arrows indicating the wind direction, which makes it easy to see which parts of the city would have been impacted by “offensive odors.” 

“I love this map because it helps visitors imagine the experience of walking through Boston streets in the late nineteenth century. It was probably pretty smelly to be in the newly-built Back Bay neighborhood, with the prevailing winds bringing smells of “mud-sewage flats” to where you’re standing!”

Fuller & Whitney, c.e., Plan of region west of Back Bay Park, Boston, Mass. : proposed improvements (1886)

Selected by Claire Tratnyek, Learning Resource Specialist

This 1886 map with overlays of what is now known as the Fenway neighborhood of Boston shows an array of possible configurations for a new neighborhood that would be created entirely anew at the tail-end of the decades-long project of filling in Boston’s Back Bay. Would the streets along Frederick Law Olmsted’s Muddy River Park (then still in progress) be gridded and regular, or would they be sinuous and curving, like the river itself? 

“When I first moved to Boston in 2007, I lived across the park on The Fenway near Westland Avenue, and have since seen the neighborhood grow and change quite a bit — although perhaps not nearly as much as it did in the late 1800s!”

Lucy Durfee, New England (1834)

Selected by Nicole Claris, Director of Education

During the late 18th and early 19th century, it was common practice for American female students attending private academies to prepare maps of various parts of the world by copying maps from books or atlases. Most often, girls were taught by female instructors, who drew maps themselves to demonstrate geographic, artistic and design skills to their pupils. Potentially based on Jesse Olney’s 1829 Map of the eastern states, it’s thought that the cartographer is possibly Lucy Durfee (Borden) of Rhode Island, 1821-1890, daughter of politician and jurist Job Durfee.

“I was one of those kids that LOVED a school assignment. I don’t know how Lucy Durfee felt making this map in 1834. Looking at it today—I see the care she took in delineating the coastlines, the neat lettering she used to label everything, and the precise application of color. It makes me want a box of sharpened colored pencils.”

Augustus Kollner & Morris H. Traubel, The Hymenial Expositor, or, Matrimonial Chart (1849)

Selected by Zaila Alves, Visitor Services & Operations Assistant

This rather cynical bird’s-eye view map portraying the trials and tribulations of love and romance, as imagined in the context of mid-19th century life, is a cathartic break for some viewers who find themselves unsatisfied by what they perceive as ‘biased and sappy’ portrayals of love. With an image of a traditional marriage ceremony underneath the title, this map rather surprisingly does not shy away from showing some of the stark realities that come with partnership and the many directions it can go. This can be seen quite clearly by the compass rose in the lower-left corner depicting the cardinal directions as “Hope”, “Love”, “Despair”, and “Hatred”.

“I like this map because it isn’t entirely pessimistic, as the “Bay of Delight”, “River Amour”, and “Fort of Felicity” icons in the upper-right corner show the joys possible in “The Great Ocean of Love”. The iconography across the map is a fascinating blend of tragedy, joy, and humor, with personal favorites being the “Gulf of Self Love” in the upper-left corner and the “Sands of Inconstancy” in the lower-left corner.”

J. R. Chapin, A bird’s-eye view of Providence : showing the new railroad station and State House (1895)

Selected by Kiana Harriel, Experiential Learning & Programs Educator

From the heights of College Hill, where Brown University and RISD stand tall, Providence, Rhode Island unfolds like a maze of streets and buildings, once a thriving industrial city. This bird’s-eye view captures my city in a way that is both familiar and disorienting—especially for someone who spent years walking its hills. 

“I love this map because it shows a different version of Providence, one without places that are important to me today. It’s a reminder of how the city has grown and changed over time, but also how much of its physical structures remain the same.”

Walter Vrooman, Map of New York City showing concrete socialism in red, and private enterprises in white, 1895 (1895)

Selected by Ian Spangler, Assistant Curator for Digital and Participatory Geography

This map uses a clever technique to argue that New York City was already a mostly socialist community by the end of the 19th century. It uses just two colors: red, the printing color, and the negative white space of the paper color. The red area shows the parts of the city that were putatively “socialist” already—things like roads, parks, bridges, and wharves that were owned and managed by the public. Only the leftover space was devoted to private enterprises. If the government could already handle so much of the infrastructure that made city life possible, this map seems to argue, its role could be expanded into a full socialist control of the economy.

“I love this map because it serves as a powerful reminder of where public goods are located in the world around us. Where do you see public, shared goods in your everyday life?”

John Kirtland Wright, Panorama from the Pinnacle (“Acorn Hill,” 1371'), Lyme, N.H. (1966)

Selected by Garrett Dash Nelson, President and Head Curator

This series of panoramic views draws us into the personal connections between geographers and the places they love. John Kirtland Wright (1891–1969) was an important academic geographer and for many years served as the librarian of the American Geographical Society. He retired to New Hampshire and in 1966, he sketched this panoramic view of “The Pinnacle,” a small rocky rise also known as Acorn Hill. Though at first these sketches might seem like a straightforward reference guide to the regional landscape, the full set of sheets draw the reader into stories of natural and human history that together make up a fully “place-based” study that is a hallmark of geography’s interdisciplinary tendencies. 

“I can’t promise this is my absolute favorite map in the collections, but just one that might get overlooked and which tells an interesting story. It’s a document which bears not only the unmistakable imprint of Wright’s professional training as a geographer and cartographer, but also the personal or even spiritual connection the elderly Wright must have felt towards this place.”

National Geographic Society (U.S.), Earth at Night (2004)

Selected by Lauren Chen, Reference and Cataloging Librarian

This map was created by combining satellite imagery from cloud-free nights, taken by three satellites over a one-year period. In addition to the human infrastructure typically shown on these types of maps, this map also shows fires (yellow), natural gas burn-off (red), and night fishing (blue).

“I like this map because it has a lot of visual appeal and, unlike other maps depicting the world at night, this one clearly shows the lights of seafaring ships and vessels.”