1945 Hagstrom Map of New York City and its Tourist Attractions

This is a 1945 Hagstrom map of New York City, presenting an enlightening overview of New York nightlife near the end of the war era.

The Map

Hagstrom - already known for judicious distortion of street size for the sake of clarity and legibility - has here stripped away all but New York's 'principal streets.' The space thus afforded is used for the presentation of landmark buildings with pictorial representations of key neighborhoods (note the musicians and dancers in Harlem, the painter at an easel in Greenwich Village, and a mustachioed braumeister at the corner of Lexington and 86th (then center of New York's German immigrant community.) 122 sites are numerically marked, keyed to a list below the map. Bridges and tunnels are drawn with either automobiles or trains. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel is a dashed line: it did not open until 1950. At the bottom of the image is a westward-oriented bird's-eye view of the city skyline, labeling Downtown, Midtown, and key features of the skyline employing the same number system used in the map above.

The Index

The margins are filled with useful features for visitors, in particular those falling outside the map's bounds, or otherwise not evident. Airports and bus terminals are listed. Amusement parks and beaches, municipal buildings, churches and synagogues, night and supper clubs, colleges, department stores, and theaters are noted.

Publication History and Census

Although the map does not bear an official date of publication, the rapidly-shifting addresses for 'Night and Supper Clubs' bears the notation 'as of October 1945'. We are aware of another edition that bears the notation 'as of Jan 1, 1949' for nightclub addresses. OCLC lists one example of this map, bearing the same 'as of October 1945' notation with respect to the nightclubs, located at the Newberry Library.