1955 General Drafting Co. Upside Down Road Map of the Eastern United States

A map with an unusual concept, this 1955 General Drafting Corporation road map of the east coast of the United States is printed upside-down! Created for 'snowbirds' fleeing New York City for the winter, this map is unlike nearly every other map one encounters. General Drafting discovered that travelers would turn their maps upside-down when traveling south, so it was decided that a map should be created that would accommodate this habit. Normally, maps are printed with the northernmost point depicted on the map at the top. Here, the cartographers have done the exact opposite: they created the map with Florida, more specifically the Florida Keys, at the top of the map and New York City at the bottom. As jarring as this may be at first glance, the more one looks at this piece the more charm it exudes. The entire piece was done purposefully. All text is printed correctly (not upside-down like the map's geography), making it fully functional. Major metropolises, such as New York, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Richmond, Raleigh, Columbia, Jacksonville, and Miami are highlighted by large bold block letters, while smaller cities and towns throughout the depicted region are labeled by using progressively smaller, less bolded font. All the highways (both U.S. and state) are marked by red lines and labeled, making the map, as previously stated, easy to use.

Publication History and Census

This map was created by the General Drafting Corporation and published by the Esso Standard Oil Company in 1955. Several editions of this map were published, but according to the Map Collection of Yale University Library, Esso first published the 'upside-down' map in 1956, making this an example of the first-edition of an incredibly innovative map design.