A New Yorker's Idea of the USA (1937)
Where LA is a city in the “State of Hollywood”
This humorous pictorial map of the United States takes the perspective of a New Yorker, with New York shown in oversized proportion to the entire country. A parody of the self-centered - and geographically illiterate -New Yorker: Hollywood and San Francisco are shown as separate states and take up most of Californian. Minneapolis and Indianapolis are shown together in Michigan as “The Twin Cities," four "Swanee Rivers” cross the South, the Great Lakes include "Great Salt Lake" and "Lake Louise”, Idaho is a city in Oregon. Hawaii is adjacent to Java and Tahiti. The Galapagos Islands are just off the west coast of Mexico.
The text on left makes the same point:
"We have cousins in the West.. They live in Wilmington, Delaware.
“He is moving to Dallas so he can be near his little Mother in El Paso.”
“Indiana was an Indian Reservation until just recently, Wasn't it?”
“So you are moving to Indianapolis; you must let me give you a letter to my niece in Minneapolis.”
“Oh yes! he entered the Marathon Swim from Los Angeles to Hawaii ...”
This map anticipates by 40 years Saul Steinberg's famous New Yorker cover: A View of the World from Ninth Avenue that explored the same point.
This map was distributed by the Columbia University Press at the 1936 New York Times bookfair. As the verso shows, it was an advertising flyer for the newly published Columbia Encyclopedia In One Volume.
Title: A New Yorker's Idea of the United States
Subtitle: The City of NEW YORK is unique - it is a nation within a NATION. Its inhabitants, of which there are some 7,000,000, are called NEW YORKERS. This MAP is presented, after patient research, as a composite of the NEW YORKERS' ideas concerning THE UNITED STATES
Collection: Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection: 1254.01
Creator: Wallingford, Daniel K.
Date: 1936
The average American's idea of the World of Knowledge is indeed startling. It's sad but true.