Books offered by JF Ptak Science Books LLC

Nutmeg and the Roundabout Creation of New York City

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1704

This may be the earliest image of "New York" as it was--that is "New York" instead of "New Amsterdam".  From what looks like an extraordinarily bad trade (sitting here in its future with 350-years of hindsight), the Dutch and the English came to terms at the end of the second Dutch-English War (1665-1667)  with at least one result that  traded the small island of Run in the Banda Islands for another small (but not nearly so small as Run) island in North America:  Manhattan.

Manhattan didn't have one thing that Run and the Bandas had, though, and that one thing was enormously valuable--nutmeg trees.  From the nutmeg tree came nutmeg and mace; nutmeg was a spice and a supposed medicinal, and traded for more than the price of gold, allowing its producers a phenomenal return on their investment.

The Bandas were in a remote place removed from remote places in Indonesia.  In the island group--which rose from great depths of the ocean--the total land mass was about 180 km^2. Not much, except if they were the only places on Earth producing a commodity in sensational demand. The Dutch kept control of the islands for a long time, and kept their trade in the spices an abject money-maker.  They secured their uncontested control of the island group at the end of that second Anglo-Duch War with the Treaty of Breda, one section of which had the Brits returning Run to the Dutch in exchange for Manhattan, which was at the time still occupied by the Duke of York, who was the brother of Charles II and who would become James II.  And thus the island became "New York".

Due to various reasons--not the least of which was the Dutch murder and export of the un-murdered indigenous population of the Bandas, who were the people who actually best knew how to care and administer the nutmeg trees--the great trade in the spices continued with diminishing effect in the Napoleonic Wars, an unpretty story of much bloodshed and enslavement.

{Image: "Fort Hollandois de l'Ile de Banda. - Hollands Fort op t' Eiland Banda."Original engraving  by J.V. Schley and printed aorund 1750 (39.5x25 cm) for  Antoine Prévost's Histoire générale des Voyages published in Paris between 1746 and 1770.  The name of the structure was actually Fort Nassau.   Good copy.  $100

 

 

 

The Porcineographic Map of the United States, ca. 1876

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

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This semi-magnificent map, The Porcineograph, produced by the Forbes Lithographic Manufacturing Company of Boston in 1876 or so, defines the states and territories of the U.S. in terms of their regional foods.  Being a vegetarian of twenty years or so, very little appeals to me, though the foods do at least sound interesting.  The again, some of it sounds fantastically bad, like the selections for Wisconsin (Boiled Hog’s Heads, Hulled Barley and Blood Pudding).

Arizona: Jerked Beef and Greasy Doings; California: Bear Steaks, Grapes and Ham Sandwich; Connecticut:  Shad, Hog’s Head Cheese and Gingerbread;  Florida: Turtle Soup, Oranges and Pickled Trotters; Kansas: Buffalo Tongues, Paw-Paw and Ham; Maine: Lobsters, Cunners, Pork-Apple-Pie and Baked Indian; Louisiana:P Gumbo Soup, Poussoneau and Larded Beef; Minnesota: Gopher, Stewed Pork and Molasses; Mississippi: Persimmon, Bacon and Hoe Cake;  New Jersey, Pork Pie, Peaches and Pigeons; New York, Roast Pig, Fried Oysters, Strawberry Shortcake & Uninvestigated Drinks; Ohio: Sugar-cured Ham, Cream Cheese and Catawba Grapes; Tennessee: “Uncle Ned”, Bacon Roasting Ears and Corn Cake; Texas: Wild Steer and Corn Dodgers wobbled in Pork Fat; Vermont: Hasty Pudding, Maple Syrup, Succotash and Pork; Wisconsin: Boiled Hog’s Heads, Hulled Barley and Blood Pudding.

[Map source:  the Library of Congress.]

Rebuilding Chicago, 1945--a Map of the Future

ITEM:  Bruce Biossat.  Remaking Chicago.  Chicago, 1945.  6x4 inches, 48pp, illustrations.  Original printed pictorial wrappers.  Nice copy.  Rare.  $95   Ref:  JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1435

Earlier today a post appeared here on re-envisioning the "one city" megalopolis of San Diego--Los Angeles--San Francisco by hoisting 2-acre neighborhoods into the sky to support some 5 million people or so.  Bruce Biossat, a writer for the Chicago Daily News, also had an ambitious plan for the city of Chicago, though in the face of putting thousands of acres of neighborhoods (with years) into massive highrises, Mr. Boissat's plan--while massive--is not nearly so as the L.A. scheme. 

For reasons I cannot determine, this small pamphlet¹ seems to be nowhere--no mention on the web, nothing in city planning databases, nothing in WorldCat (an actually nothing at all in this massive database about Mr. Biossat).  It was a massive undertaking, part of a project of the Chicago Plan Commission, and sought to relieve "blighted" areas from the city by replacing them with new housing and neighborhood design. This was part of a larger construction scheme nationwide:

    "The goal most mentioned as the desired postwar level of home construction is 1,000,000 units a year.  Both major labor organizations call for higher objectives, with the A.F.L. demanding 1,500,000 and the C.I.O urging 1,750,000 annually."

That is a lot of building, and I have no doubt that the ALF/CIO would've been behind a spending/earning opportunity like this 100%.  I'm not sure where all of this money was coming from, though I guess there would've been enough workers to handle the job.

In any event, the plan was massive, as we can see in the map above--perhaps the designers/developers felt the end of the war coming, the return of millions of soldiers, and an opportunity to make some major changes in the development of the future of Chicago. 

Maps of the Garden of Eden

ITEMS:

(Map 1)  Tabula Paradisi Terrestris justa Systema Auctoris incisa a P. Stark-Man was printed late in the 18th century, probably around 1775,13x9 inches.  $100

(Map 2)  A.R. Fremin, Carte du Paradis Terrestre, printed 1839 (in Paris, by Félix Locquin et Cie, for  l'Atlas de la Sainte Bible). 10x7 inches on 15x11 inch sheet.  Very good condition.  $100

ref:  JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1431

The tale of the Garden of Eden is told in the Old Testament, and although it described, its location is left to mystery¹, even though its legend is ground zero for the Fall of Man, the eternal disgrace for which humanity still pays. I suppose it would be nice to have a tombstone for the grave. Over time—and particularly in the Middle Ages and then in the Renaissance—the location was fixed in the eastern reaches of the known Euro-world, and then in and about Mesopotamia.

 The map Tabula Paradisi Terrestris justa Systema Auctoris incisa a P. Stark-Man was printed late in the 18th century, probably around 1775, and locates the GOE far in the north country, near the Dead Sea, deep in old Armenia, near Mount Ararat (where Noe and his family were supposed to have landed after the creator flooded the world killing everything, where everything else, young and old, infant younger, men women children, beasts and ants, were killed by a wrathful OT maker.). 

The very finely engraved map by A.R. Fremin, Carte du Paradis Terrestre, printed 1839 (in Paris, by Félix Locquin et Cie, for  l'Atlas de la Sainte Bible), again locates the Garden much further north than the great majority of other maps that I have seen, coming  (as with the map above) nearly to the Dead Sea.

This image is a detail from:

Elegant Chronological Representation of Ancient World History

Elegant Chronological Ancient World History

This is a beautiful chronology interspersed with both single-word and lengthy annotations of events, all elegantly displayed and presented.  For example, the first entry:  :”Cain, the First Man Born of Woman, he followed husbandry, he murdered his Brother, and went to live in the land of Nod, where he built the first city, and named it after his first son, Enoch:  his posterity were called the Children of Man”  (all this being printed in about 2-point in a 1.5” square).  The set of six engravings:  $450

"From Adam to the Maccabee" Sheet 1:

 

Printed on six sheets of  9x12” heavy  paper by Wilkinson in London, 1808. 

Very finely printed and very nicely colored by hand—both uncommonly so. 

The sheets are entitled:

--Chrono-Genealogical Chart of the First Age of the World, or the Ante-Diluvian Patriarhs

--Chrono-Genealogical Chart of the Second Age of the World, or the Post-Diluvian Patriarches from the Deluge to the Call of Abraham, including the Foundation of Nations and the Origins of Languages

--Chrono-Genealogical Chart of the Third Age of the World from the Call of Abraham to the Exodus or the Israelites leaving Egypt.

--Chrono-Genealogical Chart of the Fourth Age of the World, from the Exodus  from Egypt to the Dedicating the Temple by Solomon, including the Judges and High Priests

--Chrono-Genealogical Chart of the Fifth Age of the World…to the Babylonian Captivity, including the High Priests, with the Kings of Judah and Israel

--Chrono-Genealogical Chart of the Sixth Age of the World from the Babylonian Captivity to the Incarnation of the Messiah, including the Sovereigns of the Maccabees. 

Massive Display of All of the Ships of the Royal Navy, 1909

Panorama of the British Navy at its Height  1909, 15 x 90 inches

The Illustrated London News Panorama of the Force We Must Maintain:  a Navy Adequate in Strength to ensure our Shores from Invasion, our Empire from Hostile Attempts, and our Trade from Destruction in War.

Two long, folding sheets published as a special supplement in the “Illustrated London News”, March 27, 1909, after paintings by Norman Wilkinson.  Each sheet 45 inches long and are intended to be joined,  and so make a very impressive 15”x90” display.  

The images of the ships are very detailed, and the key at the bottom identifies 183 warships (with notes on tonnage, armament, speed and age).   The pair, $450

 

Geronimo, Finally Defeated by Miles and the Sun

ITEM:  Outline Map of the Field of Operations against Hostile Chiricahuan Indians showing operations from April 12th, 1886 to the date of their Surrender 4th, 1886.  A large, 29x25 inch folding black and white map lithographed by the American Graphic Company.

The map covers all of Arizona and New Mexico south of 34 degrees N, from Phoenix on the west to not quite Roswell on the east, northern Sonora to well below Hermosillo, and extreme west Texas.  On this detailed (1"=15 miles) map are located at least 40 army forts, camps and posts, as well as innumerbale railroad whistle stops, ranches, and water holes.  And of course locations of heliographic stations. Fine copy.  $400

Also included is the 49-page report that accompanies the map. 

ref:  JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1356

The Chiricahuan Apache leader and chief, Geronimo (1829-1909), famously led a progressively diminishing band  through the  Apache Wars of the 1850's-1880's.  For thirty  years of so he quirted the U.S. Cavalry, darting here and there in great exploits and famous escapes, evading the armies of the United States and Mexico.  In the end, by 1886, there were just dozens who were following him, including women and children, and the elderly, ragged, tired, hungry, and pretty much, finally, beaten.

I think what finally did Geronimo in were the miles of pursuit and the sun. 

The sun got to him via the heliographic communication network established by Major W.J, Volkman under the direction of General Nelson Miles (the other "miles" of this equation of defeat), which allowed the pursuing American army to communicate instantaneously over great distances, over hundreds of miles, without the need for runners or men or horseback or cutable telegraph wires or time  The heliograph is an ancient instrument, used for more than two thousand years--in this case, they were very highly polished mirrors that reflected brilliant signals between stations, getting their light source from the sun. It allowed the army an enormous advantage, and one that finally caught up to Geronimo.

The "miles" were just those, the thousands of miles Geronimo was tracked and retracked over that very difficult terrain in the southeastern part of Arizona and into northern Mexico, sharp mountains, endless badlands, caves, heat, height, cold....very difficult. (I've been there on treks.. .its tough land.)

 

The capitalized "Miles" was the surname of General Nelson A. Miles who sent out  with Lt. Col. George F. Crook to track down and capture Geronimo--and they almost did, again, in late MArch, 1886, when Geronimo presumably surrendered, but then fled to Mexico. After another five months and 1,600 miles, Miles came upon Geronimo om in Sonoran mountain camp, and induced him for the final time in September, 1886, at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona.

The details of the capture and surrender are told in many places by many others--I just wanted to surface the role of the sun in the capture of Geronimo.

The old man was shipped east,  never to see Arizona again. He died after being thrown from his horse and contracting pneumonia as a result of being unable to help himself to safety through a long cold night, died in a bed as a prisoner in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.

[The original map is available from our lbog bookstore.]

SuperBad Ideas: Superhighway Through the Center of Washington D.C., ca. 1925

ITEM: Map--Six Way Motorway. 20x13 inches.  Tri-fold map.  Printed ca. 1925.  Origin unknown. Very good condition. $125

ref:  JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1346    

"A Paved United States in Our Day"

If the planners of this highway had a crystal ball to see deep into the future--say, 1955--they would have been horrified to see the errors in their ways.  The equivalent of this plan might be something like picking up the Beltway, straightening it out, and running it  through D.C. along 16th street, with massive flyovers for the White House and other associated et ceteras.  This idea was published in an odd source, published by the Pennsylvania Railway Company/Lee Highway Association/National Highway Association auspices and the Hudson River Bridge and Terminal Association in about 1925, or thereabouts, just prior to the construction of the George Washington Bridge in NYC.  

 

The plan was for a six lane ("six-way") motorway from New  York to Washington, starting with the Lee Highway (or King's Highway, Route 1, one of the south's oldest roads, and part of what was supposed to be a national autotrail connecting New York with San Francisco) and taking that highway across the proposed Arlington Bridge (called Lincoln-Lee here, without irony), up New York Avenue to the ellipse, rounding the White House, going down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, and then out again to Baltimore and NYC.  Another version called for the highway to go across Key Bridge, dumping everything in Georgetown, hooking right on M Street to Pennsylvania and on out again.  Having lived in D.C.(with my store in Georgetown) for 29 years, I can say without fear of ____  that this would ave been a massively bad idea then and in every decade since then, and probably would have been removed by 1960 just to recognize and correct the sheer, overwhelming badness of its conception.

 The Memorial Bridge wound up being pretty close to this design--lacking the statuary, especially--and is quite a beautiful thing, especially when the designs for its rivals were considered.  The bridges in DC are almost all lovely, or at least those built before 1950. 

 

 

 

Great Maps Department: Nationalities of Manhattan, 1894.

ITEM:  Map of the Population Density and Distribution. $125.00

ref:  JF Ptak Science Books    Post 1343

Frederick Erastus Pierce (1878-1935), is the creator of  The Tenement-House Committee Maps, with two maps on one sheet, showing the densities of Manhattan populations (on top) and the distribution of nationalities (at bottom) which was published in Harper's Weekly for 1894..¹ [Please note--the images I've used for the post here are those for the copy at the Library of Congress.  My copy is actually a little nicer than these; I've used the LC images because the  map is just too big for the scanner.] 

Text on verso:

There's a significant amount of crowded, complex information exhibited here, some somewhat more successfully than others.  The population density map is pretty straightforward.  The distribution of nationalities, however, is another story--there are eleven groups followed here, each given a bit of a confusing flavor, given that the representations are done in black-and-white.  Its difficult data to present, especially considering that the groups shown could vary block-to-block, and that the population of Manhattan at the 1890 showed 76% with foreign-born mothers and 40+% of the city foreign-born themselves.  (It should be noted that only the groups with 2/3 of the base of any particular zone has bene plotted.)

Detail of bottom map:

Much of this population--a good chunk of the city's 1.9 million people--were housed in tenements, a pre-high-rise pre-elevator version of the highrise.  They were six or seven story walk-up buildings that were narrow (usually about 25-35 wide) and long (100-125+ as an average). There were 10-14 rooms per floor, and were generally packed with families.  A massive expose on the tenement house was photographically depicted in "The Tenement House Exhibition of 1899", the un-pretty picture described below by Lawrence Veiller in Charities Review   in 1901: 

"It has shown, step by step, the different changes that have taken place in New York tenement houses, and by means of 1,000 photographs has illustrated nearly all the evils of the present tenement-house system. Special emphasis has been laid upon the terrible evils of the dark, unventilated airshafts, which are the chief characteristic of the present type of buildings. There are over forty-four thousand tenement houses in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, and in the year 1899 about two thousand new tenement houses were erected. These, as a rule, are built on lots twenty-five feet wide by one hundred feet deep, and are planned to accommodate four families on a floor. The buildings are six or seven stories high, and each floor generally contains fourteen different rooms."

"Only four of these rooms on each floor have direct light and air from the street or the small yard. The other ten open on a narrow "air-shaft,"which is a well hole closed at both ends, seldom more than five feet wide, when between two buildings, and often only two feet six inches wide, varying in length from forty to sixty feet, and being generally from sixty to seventy-two feet high."

"The first of the accompanying illustrations represent a typical airshaft. As usual, it is closed at both ends. It is two feet ten inches wide, forty-eight feet long, and seventy-two feet high. Forty-two windows open upon it, the sole source of light and air to the rooms. Rents in this building run from$10 a month for three rooms to $17 for four rooms. The baby's bathtub is hung out of the window because the rooms are so small that there is no place to keep it inside. The shaft is only a little wider than the tub."--Charities Review, 10 (1900-1901), 19-25.

Mr. Pierce did a commendable job in exhibiting some difficult quantitative stats in a fairly restrictive medium. 

Notes:

1.  The map[ sections are entitled: No. 1. Map of City of New York showing densities of population in the several sanitary districts, June 1, 1894 . And No. 2. Map of City of New York showing the distribution of Principal nationalities by sanitary districts.  On verso: text, two smaller maps "Map of the of City of New York", showing density of population by wards, and then an unrelated but interesting  A bird's-eye view of the Cotton States and International Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia; image of C.A. Collier, President and Director-General of the International Cotton State Exposition.  2 maps : on 1 sheet ; 14 x 48 cm. and 17 x 48 cm.

Map of Newsboy Work Violators, 1914--Child Labor & Child Scavengers

ITEM:  Child Scavengers.  Report of the Massachusetts Child Labor Committee, January 1, 1915.  8x5 inches, 13pp.  Pamphlet.  Good, fresh condition.  Evidently one of the first real surveys of child scavening. $125

Ref: JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1330 [Part of a developing series in the History of Normalcy]

"There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work." -- Lewis Hine, 1908

As rudimentary as the title of this pamphlet seems, it isn't really quite so, not really completely in the column of not having child laborers and exploiting children.  There is a degree of exploitation allowable--yes it was a different time--and the map that I've plucked from this work shows the extent of rough-edging of the law that was tolerated.  The authors weren't so much concerned that there were 2500 newsboys in Boston-proper hawking newspapers morning/noon/night, but rather that they found over a third of them weren't wearing their Newsboy Selling Badge when confronted.  And it wasn't that they were under-aged--just that they were badgeless. 

On the other hand, the Massachusetts Child Labor Law Committee cited unidentified "critics" (and I don't doubt that there were many) saying that "children don't work enough nowadays, and that child labor laws have left nothing for children to do, especially in the cty where there are no chores". 

And they did do a study of child scavengers, reporting that in "one dump in a Massachusetts city fifty-five children from five to fourteen years old were moving slowly over an acre of rubbish..." The authors report (unfortunately without reference) that in one Boston school distict of 2,128 children that 125 of them "do this work", and that 500 children in Boston "are so engaged".  This didn't include the children who "gathered refuse" from martketsm freight yards, and ash barrells"  or who were sent out collected odd bits of dropped wood and coal. 

But the fact of the matter is that these folks were just knocking at the big door of child labor reform, a big piece of which would come into being in the next year (1916) with the Keating-Owens Act, which began the strict reulation of child labor, defining what the terms "labor" and "child" were. (The act restricted minig occupations to children 16 and over, and for 14 years of age for the manufacturing industries; no night work was any longer permitted, and the work day was limited to eight hours.  This was the reform, so one can imagine what the labor was like before this legislation.) In 1890 there were something like 1.5 million children in the workforce, a figure which was raised to 2 million by 1910, and which was nearly halved (because of awareness and federal oversight) by 1920.

Lewis Hine (1874-1940)--who gives us the quote to lead this short post--was a school teacher and sociologist  who was extremely aware of the plight of the children around him--well, children, and immigrants, and laborers; people without voices, or representation, poor working people.  He was a pioneering photographer whose images of these classes of people were revoltuionary, a tremendously important documentarian of a societal symptom that was pretty much misdiagnosed, or at least was chosen as something to not be seen.  That was hard to do when you had actual photographs of the grim situaiton. 

This could've been my grandmother. At about this same time. 

Hine also made some of the most  iconic labor images in American history, a vastly underappreciated heroic figure duirng his lifetime.