Historic Urban Plans, Inc.

11/26/2025

2-Day Sale of Reproduction Antique Maps!
HUP has donated hundreds of maps for the 40th Annual Map Sale, a benefit for Historic Preservation Planning Alumni's student scholarship program. The sale will be held Tues-Wed, Dec. 2-3, in the Dragon Annex, Milstein Hall, on the Cornell University campus, 10am - 3:30pm both days. A wide range of world maps, town plans, sea charts, and birds-eye views of cities and regions from around the U.S. and the world will be available at discounted prices. Some maps are available as notecards or matted, ready for framing. Credit cards, cash, checks, and Venmo are all accepted as payment.
Questions? DM Julee Johnson for more info.
[J. Arnout's Paris en Ballon, 1845]

11/18/2025

Prices Reduced up to 50% for 2 Days Only! There are still some nice maps available for purchase from our last auction, with prices lowered on half of them and dozens available for less than $100! The sale ends at Noon eastern on Wednesday, November 19. See all unsold items here: https://www.oldworldauctions.com/catalog/current?unsold=true&referral=17
Click here to see some of the best reduced prices: https://mailchi.mp/oldworldauctions/206-map-monday-savings

11/16/2025

Chaucer wrote in The Canterbury Tales, "Earn what you can since everything's for sale." Well, I don't know about "everything," but Braun & Hogenburg's classic view of Canterbury (Lot 405) is certainly for sale at the reserve price in our post-auction sale (at least at the time of posting). You can see all available lots here: https://bit.ly/33FLHr9

11/11/2025

10/26/2025

The concept of trap streets emerged in the early 20th century, with documented use beginning around the 1930s. Mapmakers, seeking to protect their intellectual property, began inserting fictitious streets, towns, or features into their maps. These deliberate errors, known as trap streets, served as a clever watermark: if a competitor’s map included the same fake detail, it was clear evidence of copying.

One of the most famous examples is Agloe, New York, a fictional town created in the 1930s by cartographers Otto G. Lindberg and Ernest Alpers of the General Drafting Company. They formed the name by anagramming their initials and placed it at a remote intersection in upstate New York. To their surprise, Agloe later appeared on other maps and even inspired real-world references, including a general store bearing the name.

Trap streets weren’t limited to roads. Some mapmakers added fake bends in rivers, nonexistent buildings, or altered mountain elevations. The practice was mirrored in other fields, dictionary editors, for instance, inserted fake words called “mountweazels.” Though digital mapping has reduced the need for such tricks, trap streets remain a fascinating chapter in the history of cartography and copyright protection.

09/20/2025

It's hard to beat Blaeu's lavish map of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands (ca. 1640). It was first produced as a separately issued wall map in 1608 with figurative panels and re-issued (without the panels) in 1630.

08/29/2025

06/09/2025

A blending of geographic accuracy and artistic flare is common in “persuasive” maps. With rich illustrations and sweeping panoramas, real estate maps from the late 19th century certainly fall into this cartographic category.

This colorful example from the Library's Geography and Map Division illustrates the "Palisades on the Potomac" neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

See more of these types of maps, including one for the dry neighborhood of "Prohibition Park" on Staten Island. 👇

https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2025/06/scenery-unsurpassed-real-estate-promotion-through-maps/?loclr=fbloc

Image: Palisades of the Potomac, scenery unsurpassed…, Brewer, H. W., Jacob P Clark, Edward B Cottrell, and Palisades of the Potomac Land Improvement Company, 1890. Geography and Map Division.

05/30/2025

Here's another rare treasure from our upcoming auction: the woodblock map of Asia from Caius Julius Solinus' Polyhistor (1538). This map is one of the first obtainable maps to focus on the continent of Asia as well as the first printed map to depict the northwest coast of America. Check it out when Auction 204 goes live next Wednesday, June 4th!

04/22/2025