All posts filed under: Historical Maps

Submission – City of Nottingham Transport Maps, 1970s, Designed by Roy Manterfield

April 13, 2018
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Sent my way by Roy himself are these two marvellous diagrams of bus routes in Nottingham, England. The first is from April 1975 and shows the two free downtown circulator bus routes, which certainly seemed to take quite the torturous route through some narrow old streets. The second map is from July 1979, and shows the entire bus network in diagrammatic form. The routes are colour-coded based on their direction from the city centre, not […]

Historical Map: BART System Map and Planned Extensions, March 1, 1989

March 13, 2018
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Here’s a rather charming illustrated map showing the Bay Area’s BART commuter rail system as it looked in early 1989, plus a glimpse into the future as it was envisioned at the time. I particularly like the little details in this map – drawn by Art Richardson of BART’s “Documentation Division” back in 1983, it would seem – all the bridges are drawn accurately, and the skylines of San Francisco and Oakland are also well […]

Historical Map: Sydney Tramways, 1921

February 23, 2018
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This is one of those maps where I’m not entirely sure if it’s the brainchild of a genius or the work of a madman. It’s an insanely detailed map-slash-diagram of tram routes in Sydney from 1921 by an unknown author that also attempts to indicate almost every major cross-street along the way. Intersections that are also designated as tram stops get a marker and increasingly larger labels to indicate their relative importance. Five different line […]

Historical Map: Suburban Bus Routes of Sydney, 1961

February 13, 2018
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The map on the reverse side of the previously featured diagram of downtown Sydney bus routes, showing an overview of routes throughout the city. The map even comments on its own shortcomings to the bottom left , with a disclaimer that almost apologetically states that “This map is intended only as a guide to the bus services.” Using the same colour-coding and ambiguous naming conventions as that diagram, the map is mainly notable for highlighting the […]

Historical Map: Location of City Bus Terminals, Sydney, 1961

February 4, 2018
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A map showing the main Sydney bus terminals and the routes which ran through them from December 1961. The route designations are an uncomfortable mix of streets the buses run along downtown (Pitt and Castlereagh Street Services) and eventual destinations (Northern Suburbs Services via the Harbour Bridge), which doesn’t really help to make the system user-friendly. The extensive legend below the map helps somewhat, but it’s all somewhat arcane. In practice, you remembered where the […]

Historical Map: Map of Kyoto and Vicinity, 1920

January 27, 2018
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Here’s a lovely old map of Kyoto, issued by the Miyako Hotel in 1920 for the benefit of its guests. The hotel is still there almost 100 years later, now owned by the Westin Group. The interurban streetcar to Otsu that once ran down the middle of the street in front of the hotel was abandoned in 1997, replaced by the underground Tōzai Line of the Kyoto Municipal Subway. The electric streetcars are displayed prominently on […]

Historical Map: New South Wales By Train Information Wheel, 1938

January 23, 2018
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I’m loving this little promotional piece produced by the New South Wales Railway Department in 1938. The user would rotate the outer ring so that a city’s name would line up with the red arrow, thus revealing various facts about that place, including which railway line it was located on and how far from Sydney it was by rail. Here, Canberra’s statistics are shown. A lovely little piece of railway ephemera. Source: National Library of […]

Historical Map: Subways in Tokyo, 1975

January 20, 2018
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From a tourist’s map to rail transportation in and around Tokyo in 1975. This side shows the then seven subway lines of the Teito Rapid Transit Authority (now the Tokyo Metro) and the three Toei lines, as well as some connecting JR and private rail lines. The reverse side shows the extensive rail network of the greater metropolitan area, but that’s a post for another time. The map itself is really a bit of a […]

Historical Map: Adelaide Metropolitan Rail Transport System, c. 1978

January 15, 2018
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Sent my way on Twitter by Cameron Coy, this diagram of rail services radiating out from central Adelaide in South Australia isn’t anything special… except for the wonderfully and unashamedly late 1970s typography, with ITC Souvenir Bold deployed in all its curvaceous, tightly letter-spaced glory. I particularly like its use for the main Adelaide station, where the letterforms across the large station circle (intentionally?) evoke the famous London Underground roundel. It’s interesting to note all […]