Plan of the City of New York in North America: Surveyed in the Years 1766 & 1767
London: Jefferys & Faden, Jan.y 12, 1776. First edition, second state.
Etched-engraved map on three sheets joined, folded to make 16 compartments (map: 48 5/8” x 35 ¾”, 1235mm x 908mm; frame: 54 ½” x 42 ¼”, 1384mm x 1080mm).
Framed floating. Joined and dissected, laid down on washi paper. With losses at each join, as well as some losses around the extremities of the joined map. Even mild tanning, with some foxing to the compartment at the upper edge, just right of center. Recently conserved: delaminated from old linen, re-joined and washed.
Bernard (Bernhard) Ratzer is known principally through his cartographic output: maps of the east coast of America, ranging from 1756 (Passamaquoddy Bay, just over the modern border of Canada from Maine; a manuscript map at the Huntington, mssHM 15417) through 1782 (a French edition of his map of New Jersey). In the dedication of the present map, he identifies himself as “Lieut.t in His Majestys 60.th or Royal American Reg.t” and Cumming, citing the List of the General and Field Officers, bears this out; he was commissioned a lieutenant on 20 February 1756 and promoted captain lieutenant in 1773.[1] His name suggests a German origin, but in the absence of additional information he remains more a name than a person.
The map was forged in the early flames of the Revolution. After the Stamp Act Riots of 1765, the royal governor, Sir Henry Moore, ordered that the City — then settled more or less up to modern 59th St. — be completely resurveyed; the task fell to Ratzer. The result was the “Ratzen Plan,” published in 1766 but with the cartographer’s name misspelled as “Ratzen.” Never has a cartographer been more slighted; Ratzer’s map was immeasurably superior to those that predated it, not only for its accuracy but also for its completeness.
As soon as 1767 Ratzer worked to update and to augment his first effort; the expanded map (published in 1770, and commonly called the “Ratzer Map”) now featured a “South West View of the City of New York from Governours Island at *” (with the * indicating the precise point from which the view was taken) drawn by Lt. Thomas Davies. Parcel-holders’ names, small winding streets and the complex profile of the coasts are all faithfully rendered. The soundings throughout the harbor and rivers remind us that this is essentially a military map: a bulwark against the seemingly-inevitable conflict between the Colonists and the Colonizers. The 1770 map — the whole engraved by the great Thomas Kitchin, hydrographer to the King — is now quite rare indeed, with only a few examples known to survive.
The impending War of Independence made access to the map more urgent; the London firm of Jefferys & Faden re-issued the map (the only difference being the imprint just above the view; Ratzer’s promotions in the intervening years are not recorded, leaving him a lowly lieutenant). The map seems to have circulated widely among officers on both sides. Dissection such as in the present example allowed for the map to be folded up small enough to fit in an officer’s holster bag; the lower half of General Hugh Percy’s example, used at the Battle of Brooklyn, is in the collection of the Center for Brooklyn History at the Brooklyn Public Library (formerly the Brooklyn Historical Society: NYC-1776.FI.RA).[2]
Purchased at Doyle, 29 April 2021, lot 1032.
Cumming, William P. “The Montresor-Ratzer-Sauthier Sequence of Maps of New York City, 1766–76.” Imago Mundi 31 (1979): 55-65; 9b.
Augustyn & Cohen, Manhattan in Maps pp. 73–77; Deák, Picturing America 121; Pritchard & Taliaferro, Degrees of Latitude 46; Schwartz/Ehrenberg, The Mapping of America p. 192; Stokes, Iconography p. 341.
[1] William P. Cumming. British Maps of Colonial America. Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1974; 64 and n. 31.
[2] The upper half of the example was on the market.
Item #JLR0426
Price: $275,000