Sign In

- Or use -
Forgot Password Create Account
This item has been sold, but you can enter your email address to be notified if another example becomes available.
Description

Good example of the 1834 edition of David Burr's map of New York City, with Burr's address shown at 192 Broadway.

The map is finely detailed, extending to Brooklyn and Williamsburg and locating streets, wards, wharves, public squares, ferrys and some early buildings. As noted by David Rumsey, describing the first edition (1832):

A rare and beautiful map. Shows Manhattan Island north to 34th Street, with portions of Brooklyn. Not in Phillips, or any references. Ristow, p. 315, mentions another, smaller map by Burr that was used in Disturnell's New York As It Is (see our copies-Haskell 765). This first edition is not in Haskell, who only lists a later edition of this map republished by Stone in 1838 and a different, larger map of similar title (Haskell 755) published in many editions by Colton and Stiles (1833 and later). This edition is engraved by Illman and Pilbrow who also engraved the maps for Burr's 1836 Universal Atlas.

The present edition, dated 1834, is apparently unrecorded. OCLC locates only the 1832 edition referenced above by Rumsey.

Condition Description
Repaired tear at top left. The map has been flattened and archivally backed to support old fold weakness and fold splits.
David Hugh Burr Biography

David H. Burr studied law, passing the New York Bar Exam, and then surveying under Simeon DeWitt in New York. His first atlas was an atlas of New York State (1829), the second state atlas to be issued in the US (after Mills’ Atlas of South Carolina in 1826). In the 1830s, he served as the official topographer for the US Post Office, producing a series of rare and highly sought-after large-format state maps. He also created a map of the country’s postal routes, which features roads, canals, and railroads. Burr traveled to London to work with John Arrowsmith; together, they produced the American Atlas in 1839.

Upon his return to the States, Burr was appointed as a draftsman for the House of Representatives, where he worked until ca. 1841. He later worked for the Louisiana Survey and the Florida Survey. By 1850, he was back in Washington D. C., working on the census. In 1852, the Senate named Burr as the draftsman to compile maps from the Federal Surveys. In 1853, Burr traveled to San Francisco, perhaps as part of his work for the Senate. He was then named as the Surveyor General of Utah in 1855. However, he was unpopular there and returned to Washington D. C. by 1870. Burr is widely regarded as one of the most important names in the nineteenth-century American history of cartography.