Bird's-Eye View of Narragansett Bay, 1907

The story of this map

In 1907 Narragansett Bay was the summer playground of the East Coast — the Newport cottages, the steamers to Providence, the yachts off Jamestown — and the Walker Lithograph company of Boston drew it the way visitors wanted to see it: from high above the ocean, the whole bay laid out toward Providence with every town, island and passage named. It was sold folded in a paper cover by the Rhode Island News Company for a few cents.

The view runs from Point Judith and the Newport shore in the foreground, past Jamestown and Prudence Island up the East and West Passages, to Bristol, Warren, Fall River on the Taunton and Providence at the top. The colours are the lithographer’s soft greens and blues, and the perspective flattens the far shore the way these views always do.

The Leventhal Map Center’s copy is unusually clean for a folding map, and their scan is 8,800 pixels wide, so it prints large without losing the small names. Restored with the tone of the paper kept; a print for anyone who learned to sail on the bay.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Restoration: trimmed the scanner margins, balanced levels while keeping the paper tone (65% of the original colour retained), removed dust and specks, applied gentle sharpening. Stamps, tipped-on notices and the wear of a used chart are kept where they belong to the object; nothing is redrawn.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.