Blog Bucket: Maps As Art

For this first blog bucket I picked mapping as an art. When I went looking for this online there were several different types of examples that were readily available. These were things such as turning maps themselves into pieces of art, I also think that old, hand drawn maps are works of art in themselves, and the most interesting one I found was tattoos of maps. Since I think tattoos are an art form in themselves then to add the art of maps into it is really interesting. The two pictures are great examples of this. One is actually the a map of the Chicago Transit Authority's elevated system. The one at the top of the post is more like a traditional hand drawn map from well before the 1800s. I just thought this was really cool and have never seen/heard of people doing this before.

Historic South Hadley

After digitizing all of the old railroad maps for a couple of the past classes, it got me curious about the historic maps I could find on my town. I had seen maps from the mid to late 1800s but I was interested in something even older. It took me a little while but the only place with really old maps came from another blog called Exploring Western Massachusetts . This blogger has posted tons of maps from all over western mass and there were several from South Hadley. This map to the left shows a street in my town that is still in use today and has even become a major route, (RT. 116). There was also another map of the falls, where there were mills along the canal just like across the river in the more famous city of Holyoke. Although the South Hadley Falls map was difficult to read and even worse when zoomed in, the rt. 116 map was a little easier to read and it was cool to see who owned which plot of land and what stores were there and how they relate to now.