Here’s a gorgeous and beautifully detailed map of New York (well, Manhattan, but at least it says there are “many places of interest on the other side of the river”!). It was designed by Nils Hansell, a graphic designer and sailing enthusiast who also worked for some years at IBM (according to the blurb over at the site I found the map, anyway).

As well as some 300-odd numbered points of interest (as seen in the detail image above), it also features a neat little schematic of the subway system in Manhattan at the lower right of the map, still divided up into the three operating companies – BMT (Green), IND (Red) and IRT (Blue).

The map also shows the last vestiges of New York’s once-extensive elevated railway lines: the Third Avenue El, which looks like it’s been cut back to its final southern terminus at Chatham Square. Previously, branches went all the way down to South Ferry (closed in 1950) and City Hall (closed in 1953). In 1955, elevated rail service in Manhattan ended, which gives us a pretty good date for this map of somewhere between 1953 and 1955.

Source: David Rumsey Map Collection