Mapping Boston

by Krieger, Alex; Cobb, David; Turner, Amy

• ISBN13: 9780262112444
• ISBN10: 0262112442
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-08-31
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

Winner, 1999, in the category of Excellence in Design and Production, Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Awards Competition presented by the Association of American Publishers, Inc., Second Prize, 2000, American Association of Museums (AAM) publication competition. and Winner of the 2001 Philip Johnson Award presented by the Society of Architectural Historians. To the attentive user even the simplest map can reveal not only where things are but how people perceive and imagine the spaces they occupy. Mapping Bostonis an exemplar of such creative attentiveness-bringing the history of one of America's oldest and most beautiful cities alive through the maps that have depicted it over the centuries. The book includes both historical maps of the city and maps showing the gradual emergence of the New England region from the imaginations of explorers to a form that we would recognize today. Each map is accompanied by a full description and by a short essay offering an insight into its context. The topics of these vignettes by Anne Mackin include people both familiar and unknown, landmarks, and events that were significant in shaping the landscape or life of the city. A highlight of the book is a series of new maps detailing Boston's growth. The book also contains seven essays that explore the intertwining of maps and history. In an epilogue, novelist James Carroll ponders the place of Boston in contemporary culture and the interior maps we carry of a city.

Author Biography

Alex Krieger is Chairman of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a principal of Chan Krieger & Associates.

David Cobb is Head of the Harvard Map Collection at the Harvard College Library.

Amy Turner is a Boston-based architect.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Norman B. Leventhal
Introduction: Revealing a City/Exploring Its Maps	xi
Alex Krieger
I Shaping Boston	1	(20)
A Brief History of Boston	2	(13)
Sam Bass Warner, Jr.
Diagramming the Growth of Boston	15	(6)
Nancy S. Seasholes
Amy Turner
II Mapping New England: A Region and City Come into Focus	21	(96)
The Mapping of New England before 1800	22	(14)
Barbara McCorkle
The Boston Map Trade of the Eighteenth Century	36	(20)
David Bosse
Windows to Our Past: Mapping in the Nineteenth Century and Beyond	56	(13)
David Cobb
The New England Plates	69	(48)
III The City of Boston Takes Form and Transforms	117	(112)
Gaining Ground: Boston's Topographical Development in Maps	118	(28)
Nancy S. Seasholes
Experiencing Boston: Encounters with the Places on the Maps	146	(27)
Alex Krieger
The Boston Plates	173	(56)
IV Epilogue	229	(8)
Map of Good Hope: Boston in the American Imagination	230	(7)
James Carroll
V Appendix	237	(2)
Timeline of Boston's Land Making	239	(4)
A Boston Chronology	243	(4)
A Glossary of Map Terms	247	(6)
For Further Reading	253	(2)
An Index of the Maps Illustrated	255	(2)
About the Contributing Authors	257	(2)
Illustration Credits	259	(6)
Index	265