Chicago: Mapping's Metropolis

It is perhaps no surprise that Chicago, as the preeminent American industrial city of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, rose to early prominence in the map production and publishing industry. The 2006 AAG Annual Meeting provides an ideal opportunity to explore this geographic history and to also become more familiar with the city's place in the twenty-first century geographic technology industry.

According to Michael Conzen, the early evolution of the Chicago map trade can be broken into three parts. During the first or incidental phase which ran through about 1850, the city was without technical and commercial enterprises principally involved in mapping. In the take-off phase of the 1850s, specialized map making and retailing enterprises were established by recent immigrants to the expanding city, and during the diversified phase of the 1860s, production and distribution of maps in the city became split between various specialized individuals and firms according to their capabilities or intended markets. At this point, firms began to advertise specialized map coloring services; they also produced maps intended for transportation, real estate, or insurance markets. Following the Great Fire of 1871, many firms were reorganized or relocated, and even though there were serious setbacks for most enterprises, the reinvestment and real estate boom that followed during the 1870s and 80s only served to spur further growth in the city's publishing and cartographic businesses. As the nineteenth century wound to a close, map firms consolidated and took advantage of economies of scale and scope to create a corporate model of map publishing, remnants of which can be seen today. It was during this period that such well-known firms as George F. Cram & Co., R.R. Donnelley and Sons, and Rand McNally & Co. became nationally dominant in the commercial and transportation atlas and map trade. As might be expected, the expansion of the mapping industry in Chicago over the last half of the nineteenth century is closely related to the expansion of rail transit across the continent, and maps such as Rand McNally's New Railroad and County Map of the United States and Canada from 1876 (see illustration) are fine examples of this early railroad cartography.

The prominence of Chicago firms in the map publishing industry has extended through the present day. As perhaps the best-known of Chicago's map publishing firms, Rand McNally bears special mention. William Rand founded a print shop in the city in 1856?only eight years after Chicago's first railroad. After hiring Andrew McNally, an Irish immigrant and skilled printer, the two men took over the printing operations for one of the city's newspapers, the Chicago Tribune. The partnership was cemented shortly thereafter in 1868, and soon after that the company began publishing maps as part of their railroad guides. Company lore holds that Rand saved the presses in the 1871 Great Fire by burying them in sand. Following expansion after the fire over the next decade, they became the largest publisher of maps in the U.S., initiating the Business Atlas (later renamed the Commercial Atlas and Marketing Guide) in 1876. They began producing maps and globes for schools in 1880. The McNally family purchased full control of the company in 1899 and managed the firm through most of the twentieth century. Rand McNally moved into publishing auto maps and guides early in the age of automobiles, school atlases like Goode's World Atlas?published since 1922, and more recently they have marketed interactive city street guides, web-accessed road construction information, and real-time traffic information delivered to mobile phones. After the McNally family sold the company in 1998 to AEA Investors, Inc. and following a series of bad business decisions, the company filed for Chapter eleven bankruptcy in 2003. Rand McNally is now headquartered in north suburban Skokie.

During the twentieth century, well-known firms such as A.J. Nystrom (1901), Replogle Globes (1930), and the Encyclopedia Britannica (1923) added their names to the roster of Chicago firms involved in the map trade. As the mapping industry has shifted to digital processes and new products over the past few decades, most Chicago firms have moved to participate in this market as other firms have arisen in response to this perceived opportunity. New firms include NavTeq, a Silicon Valley startup that relocated to Chicago and is based in the ?Merchandise Mart,? located just minutes from the conference hotel. NavTeq has 1,800 employees worldwide and delivers digital products that power in-dash navigation systems, fleet management systems, location based services, handheld and wireless location systems, and other spatially sensitive applications. A tour of NavTeq is in the works for the 2006 AAG meeting.

Of course, Chicago is also home to many famous map collections, including the Newberry Library collection, which covers the history and literature of the civilizations of Western Europe and the Americas from the Middle Ages through World War I and features such rarities as fifteenth-century sea charts and a first edition of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern world atlas. The University of Chicago Libraries is home to an outstanding map collection which, though it is closed to the general public, may be available for an AAG tour through special arrangement. The Chicago Historical Society also houses a noted map collection, and is located close to both the Newberry Library and the AAG conference hotel. Additionally, nearby at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are the archival AGS/AAG collections in the Golda Meir Library. Field trips are planned to both the Newberry Library (60 W. Walton St., www.newberry.org) and the AGS/AAG archives.

Patrick McHaffie
pmchaffi@depaul.edu

Please direct all queries to:

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