Mapping Chicagoland

FAIN: PW-285181-22

University of Chicago (Chicago, IL 60637-5418)
Cecilia Smith (Project Director: July 2021 to present)

A collaborative project to digitize, georeference, and make maps and atlases of Chicago published before 1940 accessible online. The project would include 1,167 maps from the Newberry Library, 2,934 maps from the Chicago History Museum, and 1,015 maps from the University of Chicago.

The Mapping Chicagoland project will digitize, georeference, and make accessible maps and atlases of Chicago from the Newberry Library, the Chicago History Museum, and the University of Chicago. The project will focus on making the earliest cartographic representations of Chicago accessible. The nominated collections consist of Chicago maps and atlases that were published in 1940 or earlier. Each institution’s collection has unique strengths that complement one another in scale, time period, and subject. The maps selected are among the most used at the three institutions but are also fragile in nature.