Jun 03, 2021 - Sale 2571

Sale 2571 - Lot 62

Price Realized: $ 5,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
(NEW ORLEANS.) Benjamin Moore Norman. Norman's Plan of New Orleans & Environs. Hand-colored engraved pocket map of New Orleans with concentric distance circles at 1/4-mile intervals and a 71-point keyed reference legend below. 18x24 1/2 inches overall, folding into publisher's 12mo format gilt-and-blind-stamped red roan case; modest strengthening to a few fold versos but on the whole exceptionally well preserved; publisher's printed shop ticket pasted to inside cover. New Orleans: B.M. Norman, 1845
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

A beautiful copy of an apparently unrecorded pocket map.

In 1845 Benjamin Norman published his guidebook to New Orleans which included a very similar engraved plan of the city with credit given to Henry Mollhausen for the survey. That "first" edition is itself quite scarce however, no standard references we've consulted cite the variant pocket version seen here.

In the present plate quite a few engraved differences can be found when compared to the 1845 guide version: a different script is used at the title; Mollhausen's name does not appear; our reference key notes 71 locations versus 80; a larger explanation and scale table is here; riverfront treatment differs; and frankly on closer inspection one realizes this is an altogether different plan covering less area and with less toponym detail, features which lead us to surmise it was separately published and pre-dates the "first" guidebook edition.

Jumonville, Bibliography of New Orleans Imprints 1412; Charting Louisiana 180 - (both citing the 1845 guidebook edition).