Sightseers’ Map of New York.
10 x 15 ½ inches. Newsprint; expected toning, else excellent condition. This humorous portrayal of New York was printed in the New York Times to coincide with the April 30 opening of the 1939 World’s Fair. It accompanied The Times’ “First Aid To Sightseers,” a guide to the city’s monuments, parks, and public buildings. But where the Times is smartly helpful, the map waxes humorous in characterizing neighborhoods and major attractions. A Bohemian painter holds court in Greenwich Village; the Lower East Side is marked with a melting pot; prizefighters go at it in Madison Square Garden; a pitcher launches a ball from Yankee Stadium to a batter, patiently waiting for the ball to arrive across the East River at the Polo Grounds. Bellevue Hospital is marked with a stylized whiskey bottle, a reference to the hospital’s infamous alcoholic/ psych ward. It is telling that while the cartoon and the article were occasioned by the World’s Fair, the only indication on the map of the event in question is a sign pointing off the map towards the east. The Borough of Queens, as depicted on the map, is merely what one passes through en route to the rest of Long Island. For the 1939 New Yorker, very little outside the island of Manhattan merited attention.
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