Estate / Collection: Collection of a New York Surveyor

[MAP - NEW YORK CITY]

VIELE, EGBERT L. Sanitary & Topographical Map of the City and Island of New York. Prepared for the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens Association. New York: Egbert L. Viele, 1865. This state with the printed paper slip pasted down to the title correcting an error, originally issued accompanying the "Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizen's Association of New York upon the Sanitary Condition of the City," New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1865 (per Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan Island, Vol. III, p. 778). Measures 19 1/4 x 64 1/4 inches (48.75 x 163 cm); hand-colored lithographed map on two sheets joined, linen-backed with a pink cloth border. Lightly toned, rolled with resulting vertical creases, splits to paper mostly along the four creases closest to left and right edges, wear to corners and edges resulting in some marginal chips, tears, and losses; together with: A facsimile of the same map. Inscribed in blue ink, "Presented to Prof. E. B. Lovell by David H. Ray '01, Chief Engineer of Building, N. Y. City" Printed on thin coated cloth. Creasing and light wear.

"The most enduring nineteenth-century map of Manhattan" (Manhattan in Maps). The current map is an expansion on Viele's first sanitation map of the city, which was published in 1859 and showed only the lower half of the island. In this 1865 edition, issued to accompany his Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizen's Association of New York upon the Sanitary Condition of the City, Viele maps the whole island for the first time. He also issued another, apparently later, version of the map in the same year, but with a slightly altered title, Topographical Map of the City of New York Showing Original Water Courses and Made Land, which appeared folded in a thin green cloth-bound booklet titled The Topography and Hydrology of New York (see. Doyle Rare Books, Autographs and Maps auction, April 29, 2021, lot 1033), as well as a further expanded version of the map that was issued in 1874. This map clearly delineates the city's underground rivers, ponds, canals, marshland, meadows, and sewers, as well as infilled shorelines. Viele's work on underground waterways and sanitation came at a time of great concern over disease in the city, namely cholera and malaria, which he believed were caused by an excess of moisture in the ground. He proposed that all sewage and drainage should follow the island's natural waterways, and that "the original water courses should again be permitted to have their deep and free outlets to tide water" (Manhattan in Maps). Despite Viele's intentions for his map, it found both unforeseen longevity and unrelated usefulness in the decades that followed. Its accuracy in mapping the city's waterways made it an invaluable resource to the architects, engineers, and builders constructing a rapidly growing city throughout the twentieth century. For example, it was referenced during the building of the Empire State Building, Stuyvesant Town, and United Nations Plaza. This is one of the most desirable maps of New York City and is quite scarce. Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan Island, Volume III, p. 777 & pl. 155; Cohen and Augustyn. Manhattan in Maps, p. 137.