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It was rolled up among other yellowed maps and prints that came off a delivery truck at the Brooklyn Historical Society’s stately office near the East River. Carolyn Hansen, the society’s map cataloguer, began to gently unfurl the canvas.

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A 240-Year-Old Map Is Reborn

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Brooklyn Historical Society

The 1770 map before, left, and after its restoration.

“You could hear it rip,” said Ms. Hansen, 29, still cringing at the memory. She stopped pulling. But enough of the map, browned with age and dry and crisp as a stale chip, was open to reveal a name: Ratzer.

“We have a Ratzer map,” said James Rossman, chairman of the society, who happened to be in the building that Monday last May. That statement, despite the reverence in its delivery, meant little to the others in the room, but it would soon reverberate in cartography circles and among map scholars.

via Rare 1770 Map of New York City Is Restored – NYTimes.com.

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Children playing leap frog in a Harlem street, ca. 1930. (Courtesy of the National Archives)

51

Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone. The storefront sign reads “Free Soup, Coffee and Doughnuts for the Unemployed.” February 1931. (Courtesy of the National Archives)

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Refreshment stand in New York City where pineapple and orange nectar drinks are sold for 5 cents, July 1932. (Courtesy of the National Archives)

53

Civil Works Administration (CWA) workmen cleaning and painting the gold dome of the Denver Capitol, 1934. (Courtesy of the National Archives)

54

Rows of laundry outside a New York City apartment house. Posters below advertise coming attractions at the Roosevelt and Apollo Theaters. 1935. (Courtesy of the National Archives)

55

New York City at night, ca. 1935. (Courtesy of the National Archives)

56

Downtown Cleveland, Ohio, in winter, from the air. The Cuyahoga River winds through the flats. Dec. 1937. (Courtesy of the National Archives)

57

A full house, seen from the rear of the stage, at the Metropolitan Opera House for a concert by pianist Josef Hofmann, Nov. 28, 1937. (Courtesy of the National Archives)

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Aerial view of a traffic jam, 14th Street and the Mall, Washington, D.C., Apr. 1937. (Courtesy of the National Archives)

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/07/22/from-the-archive-american-cities-pre-1950/2360/

 

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