About the Atlas

Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas visualizes Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s transformations during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Drawing on 1850, 1880, and 1910 census data, it shows how migration, residential, and occupational patterns shaped the city.

The Digital Atlas breaks new ground by locating each person counted in the Census at their home address, sometimes before the street grid was even established. To do this work we used preserved historical maps and city directories, and even traced census takers’ steps, to locate residences. The Atlas is a living project that will expand to include all five boroughs up to the 1940 census.

We invite you to use the website’s interactive features to map and visualize the residential geographies of New Yorkers and Brooklynites by their race, gender, place of birth, and occupation across the years. You can zoom in and out to view the whole city, neighborhoods, or individual buildings. You will discover spatial patterns and trends that would be impossible to grasp by looking at census records alone.

There are many histories of New York that may be found in the maps. The Digital Atlas includes a few case studies to show how selected data may be visualized to tell a story. We invite you to create your own.

Those interested in more in-depth research and alternate methods of visualizing data may access the digital layers and underlying data of the assembled maps.

The Digital Atlas is based on historical maps that capture the layout of the city at three moments in time. The maps were drawn according to prevailing methods of marking and organizing space, such as the private ownership of land and buildings, streets and rail lines to facilitate human mobility and commerce, construction of tenements and apartment buildings, and the city’s “grid” design, planned in 1811 as a vision of urban order. From 1850 to 1880 to 1910, enormous changes took place across the city as farming gave way to industry, new housing and zoning patterns reorganized everyday life, and mass immigration from Europe diversified the population. Brooklyn was a separate city until it incorporated into New York City in 1898.

The maps also contain traces of older histories. Broadway was built over the Wickquasgeck Trail used by indigenous Lenape people until the 17th century to connect Manahatta to what we now call upstate New York. In Brooklyn, old Native American trails became major streets. One can trace the movement of Black people after slavery was abolished in New York in 1827. As late as 1910, the street grid in Brooklyn bumped up against remaining farmlands.

Data

The maps use 6.5 million unique census records for 1850, 1880, and 1910, matched to home locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, available from contemporary fire insurance atlases. Early census records often do not record specific street addresses. For 1850, we relied on city directories (which include names, occupations, and addresses) and tracked the paths walked by census takers.

For more information, see Documentation

Team

This project is the result of a multi-year interdisciplinary collaboration between Columbia University’s Department of History and the Center for Spatial Research at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation.

Project Staff:

Dan Miller, Project Lead, Senior Research Associate at the Center for Spatial Research, GSAPP

Miller specializes in mapping, visualization, and the application of critical GIS methods to research in the humanities. He leads design and data analysis work on the Mapping Historical New York project.

Co-Principal Investigators:

Gergely Baics, Associate Professor of History and Urban Studies, Helman Faculty Chair of Urban Studies, Barnard College

Rebecca Kobrin, Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History, Columbia University

Laura Kurgan, Professor, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; Director, Center for Spatial Research, Columbia University

Leah Meisterlin, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University

Mae Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History, Columbia University, Team leader

Former Project Staff:

Wright Kennedy

Guangyu Tim Wu

Zoe Lin

Dare Brawley


Current Research Assistants:

Atsede Adinew Assayehgen

Sarah Baybeck

Nick Chimicles

Steven Dela Cruz Duncan

Meaghan Jungels


Former Research Assistants:

Laila Abed

Ethan Abelar

Yasemin Akcaguner

Conor Allerton

Francesca Cavuot

Madeleine Cesaretti

Yifei Chen

Zirui Chen

Ella Coon

Sumer Drall

Rachel Eu

Cameron Foltz

Max Goldner

Emily Gao

Olivia Huang

Yu-Chen Huang

Jack Hietpas

Jack Hjerpe

Amanda Hardin

Hritik Jain

Bo Panchanok Jumrustanasan

Sally Kaye

Gerald Lee

Maddy Liberman

Charlotte Zihao Li

Victoria Sun Li

Yuelin Li

Didier Lucceus

Jolene Lim

Benjamin Maltz

Amelia Marcantonio-Fields

Jayron Sara Mardani

Rachel Xuerui Michelson

Sally Kaye

Gerald Lee

Maddy Liberman

Charlotte Zihao Li

Victoria Sun Li

Yuelin Li

Didier Lucceus

Jolene Lim

Benjamin Maltz

Amelia Marcantonio-Fields

Jayron Sara Mardani

Rachel Xuerui Michelson

Amogh Mishra

Sofia Montrone

Andre O'Quinn

Sushant Surendra Prabhu

Naishadh Nimesh Parmar

Ethan Rankin

Julia Ross

Colette Rosenberg

Priya Sagar

Joshua Schwartz

Nikita Shepard

Giselle Silla

Tabitha Sugumar

Jenna Swartz

Stacy Tao

Cindy Tsang

Martijn Veenendaal

Clinton Wong

Chang Xu

Haiqing Xu

Wei Xao

Kun Yao

Bailey Yellen

Claire Jiaying Zhang

Myles Zhang


Web Development and Design by Stamen:


Eric Brelsford, Lead Design Technologist

Kelsey Taylor, Senior Technical Cartographer

D. Vinay Dixit, Director of Client Services

Nicolette Hayes, Design Director


Inhye Lee, Design Technologist

Bernardo Loureiro, Design Technologist

Eric Rodenbeck, Founder and Creative Director

Funders

Funding for this project is provided by the Robert D. L. Gardiner Foundation. The mission of the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation is to educate, cultivate and sponsor projects that further Robert Gardiner’s personal passion for New York history.

How to Cite the Atlas

Gergely Baics, Wright Kennedy, Rebecca Kobrin, Laura Kurgan, Leah Meisterlin, Dan Miller, Mae Ngai. Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas. New York, NY: Columbia University. 2021. https://mappinghny.com