Developed as an assignment on museum education and outreach, to accompany the 2009 exhibit at the New York Public Library, Mapping New York's Shoreline, 1609-2009. Student packet comprises pages 1-10, followed by educator packet, pages 11-14.

1. Arlene Yu, LIS 697-06 , Fall 2009
The New York Public Library
Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-2009:
Celebrating the Quadricentennial of Henry Hudson’s Exploration
of the Waterways of New York
1 Boundary line
2 Cartographer
3 Cartouche
4 Coat of arms
12 5 Compass rose
6 Fleur de lys
7 Inset
8 Latitude
13 9 Longitude
1
10 Map grid
11 Panoramic view
12 Pictorial relief
8 13 Rhumb lines
14 Title
4
3 10
14
6 5
2 7
11
9
Maps blend art and science and sometimes, propaganda The Exhibition
(visit these sections)
Maps are abstract graphic representations of the real or imagined world. Mapmaking, or
cartography, involves the art of designing these graphics as well as the science of making From the Netherlands to
1
them accurate. Mapmakers, who are called cartographers, select and show the only Nieuw Nederland
information they think is important to fulfill the purpose of the map they are making.
Exploration & Colonialism 2
Although there is some information on the inland areas of the map, notice how much
more detail there is in the coastal areas and along the rivers. The cartographer probably The Great Port 3
derived a lot of his information from nautical charts, which were designed to help sailors
navigate. The map is also a political map, showing the boundaries between the Dutch
The Greater Harbor 4
colonies (in yellow) and the British (in pink). The map is also political in the sense that
cartography at the time was dominated by the Dutch, and the Dutch cartographer,
Nicolaes Visscher, exaggerated the size and importance of the Dutch areas (Novi Belgii). The Hudson River 5
Environmental Issues &
A glossary of map terms, some of which are identified on the map above, is on page 2. 6
The Future of the Harbor
Page 1

2. A brief glossary of maps and mapmaking
Aerial view. A perspective from directly above a site looking down, so that only tops of buildings and objects are shown.
Atlas. A collection of maps or charts bound together into a book.
Bird's eye view. A perspective from above, but at an angle, so that tops and sides of buildings and objects are shown in a three-
dimensional view. See also Panoramic view.
Cartouche. A scroll or panel used on many globes and maps to give the title of the object and often the name of the maker.
Cartouches were also used to fill up empty space or distract the viewer's attention from missing geographical data.
Cartographer. A map maker. On this chart, the cartographer is Gerard van Keulen.
Cartography. The art and science of making maps.
Chart. A detailed map of seas and coasts, designed for sailors.
Coat of arms. A decorative heraldic badge usually centered on the shape of a shield, used on flags, battle dress, house fronts and
so on to show that they belonged to a particular family, clan or nation.
Compass. A device for determining direction, which consists of a magnetized needle that pivots and points to magnetic north.
Compass rose or wind rose. A drawing of a compass on a chart which usually shows either 16 or 32 compass points, showing
courses to sail. Wind roses showed the directions of the eight named winds in early charts. The fleur-de-lys symbols at the top of
the compass roses on this chart indicate north.
Contour line. An imaginary line on the ground which connects points of the same altitude. Used to show relief.
Equator. An imaginary line drawn around the Earth, midway between the North and South Poles.
Fleur de lys. A representation of a lily flower with three distinct petals, the old symbol of France. The fleur de lys is used to
symbolize north because it is shaped like a “T,” which stands for the old name of the North Wind, the Tramontana.
Hachure. A series of lines used on a map to indicate the general direction and steepness of slopes. Hachures are drawn in the
direction of slopes. Compare to pictorial relief and contour line.
Inset. Small image within the border of a larger map.
Key. A list or chart that explains the symbols on a map or chart.
Latitude. Distance north or south of the Equator (latitude 0°)on the surface of the Earth, measured in degrees (angles) relative to
the earth’s center. Latitude gets higher (bigger) as you go north or south.
Longitude. Distance east or west from a known position (meridian) on the surface of the Earth, measured in degrees relative to
the earth’s center. Today the Prime Meridian (longitude 0°) from which longitude is measured is at Greenwich, England. In the
past, the Prime Meridian has been located in many places, including Paris and the Canary Islands.
Map. An abstract graphic representation of the real or imagined world, using points, lines, and areas that vary in size, shape,
value, texture or pattern, color, and orientation.
Map grid. A network of horizontal and vertical lines, uniformly spaced, used to locate points on a map.
Map projection. A method of representing the earth's three-dimensional surface as a flat two-dimensional surface. One of the
most famous projections is the Mercator projection.
Panoramic view. A bird's eye view, usually of a wide area.
Pictorial relief. Elevations of the land shown through stylized drawings of hills and forests.
Political map. A map showing where one country, region, state, or city ends and another begins.
Portolan. An early type of sea chart from the Mediterranean Sea, featuring wind roses or compass roses, and rhumb lines.
Prime Meridian. An imaginary line drawn from the North to the South Pole which determines 0° longitude.
Relief. Elevations and depressions of the land or sea bottom.
Rhumb lines. The lines of compass headings extended from compass roses.
Scale. Relationship existing between a distance on a map, chart, or photograph and the corresponding distance on the Earth.
Vellum. A map material made from sheepskin. It is tough and survived well at sea, so it was often used for charts.
Page 2

3. The cartographer defines the world we see
Walk through sections 1 and 2 of the exhibit. In each section, pick one map and analyze it using the worksheets.
Do not analyze the map shown on page 1 of this booklet.
Section 1. From the Netherlands to Nieuw Nederland
1. What map elements or features do you see?
rhumb lines coat of arms
latitude colored areas
longitude
compass rose(s) advertising (describe)
fleur-de-lys
relief (pictorial, contour lines, hachures)
water depths (“soundings”)
rivers
scale decorations in seas or land masses (describe)
cartouche
inset
cartographer
date
political boundaries decorative border (describe)
railroad lines
roads/trails
panoramic view
2. Which way is north?
3. Who created this map?
4. When was it created?
5. Was any of it made by hand (drawn, engraved, colored)?
6. If you can find them, list some place names on the map that are used today that were originally
Dutch
English
Native American
Page 3

4. Section 1. From the Netherlands to Nieuw Nederland (continued)
What is the map's purpose?
What things on the map (or left off of it) show the map's purpose?
What things on the map (or left off of it) show what people knew and didn't know?
How does the map compare to a current map of the same place? What's different and what's the same?
Write a question for the cartographer about something the map leaves out
Page 4

5. Section 2. Exploration & Colonialism
1. What map elements or features do you see?
rhumb lines coat of arms
latitude colored areas
longitude
compass rose(s) advertising (describe)
fleur-de-lys
relief (pictorial, contour lines, hachures)
water depths (“soundings”)
rivers
scale decorations in seas or land masses (describe)
cartouche
inset
cartographer
date
political boundaries decorative border (describe)
railroad lines
roads/trails
panoramic view
2. Which way is north?
3. Who created this map?
4. When was it created?
5. Was any of it made by hand (drawn, engraved, colored)?
6. If you can find them, list some place names on the map that are used today that were originally
Dutch
English
Native American
Page 5

6. Section 2. Exploration & Colonialism (continued)
What is the map's purpose?
What things on the map (or left off of it) show the map's purpose?
What things on the map (or left off of it) show what people knew and didn't know?
How does the map compare to a current map of the same place? What's different and what's the same?
Write a question for the cartographer about something the map leaves out
Page 6

7. Maps bear witness to history
In Section 3, find the alcove for Rutgers Farm and look at the real estate maps and bird’s eye views showing the
changes in the neighborhood over time.
Section 3. The Great Port – Rutgers Farm
1. Estimate how many city blocks the original Rutgers Farm encompassed as of 1897.
2. Compare the Map of the Rutgers Farm as it Existed in 1784 (showing city blocks as of 1874) and the 1897 map by Bromley
of the same area on the opposite wall. These maps were created only 23 years apart.
a) What could each of these maps be used for?
b) Describe any street changes that you see. Have new streets been added? Have old streets disappeared?
c) Which way is north on each of these maps? Why do you think the cartographers oriented the maps in this way?
3. Compare the 1857 maps by Perris with the 1897 maps by Bromley to see the changes that happened over 40 years.
a) Which map is larger scale?
b) Find William B. Crosby’s mansion, the only leftover from Rutger's Farm, on the 1857 map. What’s the block number
for the corresponding block on the 1897 Bromley map?
c) Describe the changes in the industries that are shown on the maps. What new industries appeared by 1897, and
what old industries disappeared? Name two parks that were created between 1857 and 1897.
Page 7

8. Maps for every purpose, including fun
Find Section 5 of the exhibit, about maps of the Hudson River. Walk along the map on the floor and look at all
the different map elements it incorporates.
Section 5. The Hudson River
1. Remembering that this map consists of numerous pages bound into an atlas, what purpose(s) could this map serve
and why? Can you think of any other uses for the map?
2. Pick a town on the floor map. Choose two other maps in the room, both of which are geared toward tourism, to
compare how they depict the same town.
Map 1 Map 2
Map title
Cartographer
Date
Why did you chose this
map?
What features from the
floor map are missing from
this map?
Why do you think the
cartographer for this map
left those features out?
Page 8

9. The cartographer’s dilemma
Draw your own map of the exhibit below so that someone can locate and identify the four maps you reviewed in Sections
1, 2, and 5 of the exhibit. Find a way to make your favorite map stand out. The map you draw can be geographically
accurate, or extremely abstract, but it must be obviously designed for navigation. Include the following elements:
1. A cartouche containing the map title, your name as the cartographer, and the date
2. An inset showing all four of your chosen maps on a timeline. The timeline must also include at least two of the
following dates: 1609, the year Henry Hudson sailed up the Hudson River, 1664, the year the English took control of
Nieuw Nederland, 1776, the year of American independence, 1812, the start of the War of 1812, and 1865, the end of the
Civil War.
Page 9

11. Arlene Yu, LIS 697-06, Fall 2009
The New York Public Library
Learning at the Library:
K-12 Outreach at the Research Libraries
Educator Packet
Mapping New York's Shoreline, 1609-2009:
Celebrating the Quadricentennial of Henry Hudson's Exploration of the Waterways of New York
Grade level 9-12
Tour length 1 ½ hours
The tour will begin with a 10 minute slide lecture in the Celeste Bartos Education Center at
South Court, located on the first floor, followed by a visit to the exhibit in the D. Samuel and
Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall next door. Students will be provided with a tour packet
that includes activities for them to explore the exhibit. Please leave extra time for your
students to arrive and depart as all bags are checked upon entering and exiting the building.
Introduction The objective of this tour is to introduce students to cartography and the study of maps as
historical documents. Historic maps (old maps, as opposed to historical maps created today
about the past) convey far more information than what factual errors the cartographers
committed out of ignorance. Cartographers select what information to include and what to
omit from every map they make, and their decisions can affect their audience's perceptions of
the world. The center of a map is usually regarded as more important than the edges, for
example.
But old maps can be difficult for students to read and understand. This tour will provide
students with a framework for analyzing old maps while teaching them cartographic
terminology. Students will learn how paying attention to map details can help them determine
cartographers' purposes as well as biases, and the importance of evaluating any map to
determine what it betrays about how people understand the world around them.
NY State Social Studies
education
standards 1. History of the United States and New York
Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major
ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in the history of the United States
and New York.
2. World history
Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major
ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in world history and examine the
broad sweep of history from a variety of perspectives.
3. Geography
Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the
geography of the interdependent world in which we live – local, national, and global –
including the distribution of people, places, and environments over the Earth’s surface.
Page 1

12. 4. Economics
Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of how
the United States and other societies develop economic systems and associated institutions
to allocate scarce resources, how major decision-making units function in the United States
and other national economies, and how an economy solves the scarcity problem through
market and nonmarket mechanisms.
Language Arts
1. Students will read, write, listen, and speak for information and understanding
As listeners and readers, students will collect data, facts, and ideas, discover relationships,
concepts, and generalizations; and use knowledge generated from oral, written, and
electronically produced texts. As speakers and writers, they will use oral and written
language to acquire, interpret, apply, and transmit information.
3. Students will read, write, listen, and speak for critical analysis and evaluation
As listeners and readers, students will analyze experiences, ideas, information, and issues
presented by others using a variety of established criteria. As speakers and writers, they will
present, in oral and written language and from a variety of perspectives, their opinions and
judgments on experiences, ideas, information and issues.
4. Students will read, write, listen, and speak for social interaction
Students will use oral and written language for effective social communication with a wide
variety of people. As readers and listeners, they will use the social communications of
others to enrich their understanding of people and their views.
The Arts
3. Responding to and analyzing works of art
Students will respond critically to a variety of works in the arts, connecting the individual
work to other works and to other aspects of human endeavor and thought.
4. Understanding the cultural dimensions and contributions of the arts
Students will develop an understanding of the personal and cultural forces that shape
artistic communication and how the arts in turn shape the diverse cultures of past and
present society.
Technology
2. Students will access, generate, process, and transfer information using appropriate
technologies
5. Students will apply technological knowledge and skills to design, construct, use, and
evaluate products and systems to satisfy human and environmental needs.
Career Development and Occupational Studies
1. Career development
Students will be knowledgeable about the world of work, explore career options, and relate
personal skills, aptitudes, and abilities to future career decisions.
2. Integrated learning
Students will demonstrate how academic knowledge and skills are applied in the workplace
and other settings.
Page 2

13. Pre-tour 1. Download, print, and post the twelve letter-size tiles that make up the wall-size
preparation Waldseemuller map of the world. The map was the first map ever made to include the word
"America," and the only existing copy is in the Library of Congress. There are two files,
http://myloc.gov/Education/LessonPlans/Pages/lessonplans/world/docs/world1507-pt1.pdf
and http://myloc.gov/Education/LessonPlans/Pages/lessonplans/world/docs/world1507-
pt2.pdf. Then optionally use the website, Maps and Mapmakers: Seeing What's On the Map
(http://myloc.gov/Education/OnlineActivities/Pages/onlineactivities/mapmaking/
index.html), to explore the cartographer's choices in what to show and what to omit. Ask
students how we can determine the cartographer's emphasis and what that might say about
he and/or his contemporaries viewed the world. Explore what maps are and what areas of
life are affected by maps (trade, travel, politics, communication, environment, etc.)
2. Next, visit the British Library's Learning Mapping History site and explore the 1644 Chinese
World Map (http://www.bl.uk/learning/artimages/maphist/deception/chineseworldmap/
chinese.html), as well as the fake map of Roman Britain (http://www.bl.uk/learning/
artimages/maphist/deception/fakemap/fake.html), to learn about how map design can be
deceptive in intent.
Materials For the tour, please be sure students bring:
• Notebooks or other items suitable for acting as writing surfaces
• Pencils
• Erasers
Post-tour 1. Using the supplied images (none of which are in the exhibit) from before and after the
activities American Revolution, divide the students into groups. Ask each group to analyze the map
using the framework they learned at the library. Then ask each group to write plausible
news stories, based on their knowledge of the period, for which the map could serve as an
appropriate illustration. Then ask the groups to design maps for a current news story –
local, regional, national, or international.
2. Using Google Earth, ask students to make their own maps of New York City or their
hometown, locating and marking important information, activating layers to be viewed,
and drawing lines or shapes on top of the map if appropriate. Encourage students to think
of the various Hudson River maps in Section 5 of the exhibit as examples of maps with
different agendas. Students should strive for visual clarity and pleasing design, in addition
to making their maps fulfill a specific, stated purpose.
Each student should save their place marks in a KMZ file, and then present their map to the
class, explaining their layer and place mark selections and their use of drawing objects, as
well as how they were able to locate their places of interest (latitude/longitude, street
address, zooming in).
In the discussions of student presentations, try to cover the following points:
• How different locating methods (latitude/longitude, street address, zooming in) work,
and how accurate they seem.
• How latitude and longitude can pinpoint something on a map, but aren't as meaningful
to us as a street address can be.
• How Google Earth's satellite imagery might actually interfere with designing a clear
map. Compare Google Earth to Google Maps map view and terrain view and to plain
outline maps and discuss which would best suit the students' designs.
Extended 1. Explore the connection between maps and math, using resources from
activities http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/pres/map/ and materials from the US Geological Survey at
http://egsc.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/teachers-packets/exploringmaps/ and
http://egsc.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/MapProjections/projections.html.
Page 3

14. 2. Use the National Geographic lesson plan, Maps and Current Events
(http://www.nationalgeographic.com/resources/ngo/education/xpeditions/lessons/03/g912
/exploremaps.html), to develop and look at modern maps with a critical eye.
3. Have students explore making mental maps of a work of fiction or of a particular topic as a
different way to approach outlining and memorization.
Suggested 1. NYPL online guide to the exhibit, Mapping New York's Shoreline, 1609-2009:
reading/ http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/shoreline/index.html.
additional
resources 2. NYPL online exhibit American Shores: Maps of the Middle Atlantic Region to 1850:
http://www.nypl.org/research/midatlantic/index.html and the NYPL Digital Gallery
(http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=history&col_id=149
and http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=history&
col_id=442). Additional historical maps.
3. The British Library's Learning Mapping History website:
http://www.bl.uk/learning/artimages/maphist/mappinghistory.html.
4. The University of Southern Maine's discussion of the Mitchell Map, 1755-1782: An Irony of
Empire (http://usm.maine.edu/maps/web-document/2/1/sub-/1-introduction-and-
overview). NYPL has a copy of the map, available in the Digital Gallery at:
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?484185).
5. The Young Oxford Companion to Maps and Mapmaking, by Rebecca Stefoff. Oxford
University Press, 1995. ISBN 0195080424, ISBN-13 9780195080421. 303 pages.
Page 4