Spence School Library: New York City History Primary Source Archives: PS: Maps & Subway

Maps and Atlases

Early Real Estate Atlases of New York
New York Public Library. "Over 2,000 maps of New York City, including "fire insurance maps" from the 1850s-1860, showing streets, blocks, natural and manmade features, and more."
Historical NYC Maps & Atlases
New York Public Library
MAP: Maps and Atlases
NYC Government. Special collection "Items in the gallery include "estate and farm" maps that illustrate how the 1811 grid plan sliced up the original farms and estates into lots suitable for development."
Old NYC: Mapping Historical Photos from the NYPL
"This site provides an alternative way of browsing the NYPL's incredible Photographic Views of New York City, 1870s-1970s collection."
Urban Reviewer: by Partner & Partners and SmartSign
Partner & Partners and SmartSign. "A comprehensive online map showing all the adopted neighborhood master plans for NYC. These 'urban renewal plans' were adopted to get federal funding for acquiring land, relocating the people living there, demolishing the structures and making way for new public and private development."
NYC Historic District Maps

NYCityMapLandmarks

"Scroll down to the "Landmark" section and tick all four boxes - designated historic district, designated scenic landmark, landmark, and interior landmark - to populate the map."

Landmarks Preservation Commission, Historic District Maps

Created by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Visualizing Nineteenth-Century New York
"New strategies were needed to make sense of the new visual urban order. Entrepreneurs were critical to that project as they circulated maps, city views, stereoviews, guidebooks, and other illustrated forms as part of New York’s burgeoning publishing industry, the nation’s largest. New technologies of vision facilitated that culture of visuality; lithography and half-tones greatly expedited the diffusion of those materials. Harper’s Weekly woodcuts along with other illustrated newspapers promoted a common visual understanding of the doings of the city’s denizens by mid-century."

Mapping America: Every City, Every Block

Mapping America: Every City, Every Block New York Times. Browse population growth and decline, changes in racial and ethnic concentrations and patterns of housing development.

New York City: A City of Neighborhoods, Department of City Planning, 2014

"A revised wall map displaying the neighborhood names and community district boundaries along with informative statistics on the geographic, demographic and economic profile of NYC."

The New Littles

"If Italians have left Little Italy, where are the new Littles? Little Poland? Little Korea? Andrew Beveridge of Social Explorer found the NYC census tracts populated by at least 20% of any ancestry or ethnicity."

NYCsubway.org

"Nycsubway.org is a site dedicated to the history of the NYC Subway system, including photos, maps, and documents." Collections include:

Historic Maps 1880-2010
Subway and Bus Routes.
Abandoned and Disused Stations
Includes photos and maps.
Line By Line Guide
Includes access to historical elevated lines.
Historical Documents
LInks to primary sources including newspaper articles and city publications.
Subway Art Guide

Transportation

The Rise and Fall of Penn Station
PBS. "Pennsylvania Station covered nearly eight acres, extended two city blocks, and housed one of the largest public spaces in the world; many of the 100,000 attendees of Penn Station's grand opening proclaimed it to be one of the wonders of the world." 53 years after the station’s opening, it was slated to be destroyed.
New York Transit Museum: Collection Database
"The New York Transit Museum, one of the city's leading cultural institutions, is the largest museum in the United States devoted to urban public transportation history."

Street Names

A Guide to Former Street Names in Manhattan
"Oldstreets.com will help you identify Manhattan locations mentioned in old books, articles and documents relating to New York City. It contains more than 1,600 old names of streets and other urban features that are no longer on the map."