1939 Hagstrom Map of New York City, w/ Never-Built 'Battery-Brooklyn Bridge'

This engrossing c. 1939 folding map of New York City was prepared by local cartographic firm Hagstrom for the Triborough Bridge Authority. Meant primarily to inform motorists, it also serves as a celebration of the vision of urban planner and highway enthusiast Robert Moses. At the same time, the map chronicles one of Moses' rare defeats, the never-built 'Battery-Brooklyn Bridge.'

A Closer Look

Highly practical, the map includes a host of information on highways, major local roads, bridges and tunnels, ferries, airports and airfields, parks (another domain in Moses' kingdom), golf courses, and more. The map also includes some aesthetic flairs, including the ornate text used for waterways, harkening back to the engraved maps of the early modern period. Several important buildings are illustrated or otherwise indicated, including sports stadiums and Manhattan's major train stations (the only nod to the existence of the city's extensive train and subway network). Proposed or ephemeral structures such as the never-built Secaucus Airport and the short-lived Madison Square Garden Bowl in Queens are also included. Another obvious element of the map, marked out in orange, is the site of the 1939 World's Fair. Again, Robert Moses was a major driving force behind this feature of the city's landscape, having desired for years to transform the swamp-like wetlands, which were being used as a dumping ground for coal ash, into a beautiful park.

The main purpose of the map, however, is to celebrate the opening of the Triborough and Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, opened in 1936 and 1937, respectively. The Triborough was the crowning achievement of Moses' career, a clear demonstration of the ease and efficiency of movement that could be achieved, even in the urban jungle of New York City, with enough concrete and willpower. While cursorily providing toll rates, most of the verso is occupied by photographs and renderings of the new bridges, including a miniaturized version of Edward Spofford's c. 1936 intricate bird's-eye view (also sold by us TriboroughBridgeAuthority-spofford-1936).

Robert Moses and the Triborough Bridge Authority

This map, like much else in New York City at the time, was connected to the influential urban planner Robert Moses. The Triborough Bridge (Robert F. Kennedy Bridge) was born of New York City's ambition to modernize its infrastructure and improve transportation during the early 20th century. Initially proposed in the 1920s as a means of connecting Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens, the project gained momentum with the formation of the Triborough Bridge Authority in 1933, led by Moses. The bridge's construction was envisioned as part of the city's response to the increasing demand for efficient transportation routes and as a strategy to provide jobs during the Great Depression. Funded in part by federal New Deal programs, including the Public Works Administration, the ambitious project faced numerous financial and engineering challenges before construction began in earnest in 1934. The Triborough Bridge opened to traffic on July 11, 1936, and immediately transformed regional connectivity, facilitating commerce and travel between the boroughs while embodying the era's spirit of bold, transformative infrastructure projects. Its completion marked a pivotal moment in New York City's evolution into a modern, car-centric metropolis.

When the Power Broker's Power Broke

Perhaps the most noticeable and certainly the most unusual feature of this map is the non-existent 'Brooklyn-Battery Bridge,' noted as 'under construction.' To call this an exaggeration would be an understatement; 'under consideration' would be much more accurate. Moses was an ardent proponent of bridges, considering them easier and cheaper to build than tunnels, and more aesthetically pleasing to boot. But even though he had considerable political support at the city, state, and federal level, the residents of Battery Park and other neighborhoods in southern Manhattan strongly disagreed, and after a bitter dispute, Moses took a rare loss After a delay due to World War II, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel opened in 1950. It has been argued that, in response to this dispute, Moses moved the New York Aquarium to Coney Island and planned to demolish Castle Clinton, but again suffered defeat when the castle was designated a historical landmark and handed over to the National Park Service.

Aside from the 'Brooklyn-Battery Bridge,' another strange feature on this map is the absence of the Queens Midtown Tunnel - true, the tunnel did not open until 1940, but it had been approved for years and under construction since 1936. This omission was surely the result of politics rather than cartographic ineptitude on the part of Hagstrom. Moses opposed the Queens Midtown Tunnel, thinking (again) that a bridge was cheaper and easier to build. He also held a grudge against the Tunnel Authority because he had earlier aspirations to run it but had been rejected. Therefore, far from being an 'objective' overview of the city, its highways, and its connections over and under rivers, the map has Moses' fingerprints all over it, reflecting his biases, accomplishments, and grudges.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared by the Hagstrom map company for the Triborough Bridge Authority. It is undated, but from context can with confidence be dated to c. 1939 due to several factors, including the inclusion of the 'Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel,' which was only seriously considered for a handful of months in 1939. Only four institutions catalog the map in the OCLC: the Library of Congress, the New York Historical Society, Yale University, and Cornell University.