We love axonometric views – a 3d orthographic view of the world – and they are one of our inspirations for communicating the taxonomy of specimens we find. The mixture of precision (orthographic projections can be measured) and art (how much detail to resolve is a choice) hits a sweet spot. You can spend hours on the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, or google, and explore many different views of NYC. We also find a great deal of inspiration by searching the following locations:
- Library of Congress, especially the Historic American Buildings Survey, Historic American Engineering Record, and Historic American Landscapes Survey catalog (HABR, HAER, HALS) – you can search all three collections here
- New York Public Library has a great NYPL Map Warper (but they just announced in April 2021 it will be no longer maintained… booooooo!)
- Old NYC – locating historical NYC photos on a spatial map
- 1980’s NYC – photos of NYC buildings from 1980 land survey
Below are a set of axonometric city views of NYC we have recently found, and have found inspirational.
New York Picture Map, 1963 by Bollmann et al
Anderson map, 1985
Ishihara map, 2000
