In the Spotlight

Library Restores Oldest Known Map of Evanston

By Nina Barrett

The oldest printed map of Evanston -- discovered several years ago on the verge of disintegration -- has been vibrantly restored and made freely available online by Northwestern University Library.

"This map is a very rare and important piece of Evanston's history," says University Archivist Kevin Leonard, "and the conservation staff here did an incredible job bringing it back from the grave."

Published circa 1876 by local surveyor and mapmaker Theodore Reese, the map appears to be the earliest published plat of blocks, streets and alleys in all three of the separate villages -- north, south and central -- that eventually merged into the incorporated City of Evanston. "So it's valuable as a relic of Evanston's past," Leonard says, "but it also continues to be of use to anyone researching the history of their own or other Evanston real estate, because these were some of the earliest legal property boundaries."

The history of Evanston real estate has always been intimately intertwined with the University's history. The area was known as Ridgeville until the mid-19th century, when Northwestern founding trustee Orrington Lunt suggested to his fellow trustees that they purchase a large plot of lakeside land for $1,000 down. In subsequent years, Leonard says, the university trustees acquired additional parcels of land, selling or leasing plots to finance the institution's growth. Much of this land was surveyed and laid out in plots by the university's business agent Philo Judson (for whom Judson Avenue was named). He submitted the original plat for a village named Evanston -- after Northwestern trustee John Evans -- in 1854.

The map just restored by Northwestern includes this central area as well as the two separate settlements to the north and south that were flourishing by the late 19th century. Bordered by advertisements for local businesses including a "Fashionable Bootmaker" and a purveyor of "Family Groceries and Provisions," the map also contains an ad for Philo Judson's real estate and surveying business.

"Philo Judson died in 1876, which means the map must have been published by then," says George Ritzlin, owner of an antiquarian map business on Central Street. "That means it precedes Snyder's 1883 map, which was previously the earliest known one."

Ritzlin researched the map’s history when he acquired it in 2006 from an Evanston resident who said it had been in his family’s possession for at least 40 years. “It is certainly very rare, and may be unique,” he says, since there was no record of it having been catalogued by the Library of Congress or the Checklist of Printed Maps of the Middle West to 1900, the most comprehensive listing of maps held by Midwestern libraries, museums and historical societies. (Though the Checklist is now 20 years old, its editor, Robert Karrow, who is curator of special collections and maps at the Newberry Library in Chicago, confirms that the map remained unknown until Northwestern recently brought it to his attention; it has now been catalogued.)

Russell Maylone, the library’s former curator of special collections, bought it from Ritzlin and then gave it to University Archives, partly, he says, because it perfectly complemented the existing property records held by the Archives. “But also,” he adds, “because it was obvious that unless it received immediate attention from some highly skilled conservation professionals, it was just going to fall apart and be lost to everyone.”

Certainly, 40 years of basement storage had taken a huge toll. It was filthy, covered with grime and animal droppings, and colonized by mold and cocoons. Originally mounted for wall-hanging, the 4’ x 3 1/2’ map had been rolled up on its wooden dowels, but the scroll had been crushed, causing the varnished paper to crack into hundreds, if not thousands of tiny pieces. "If not for the fact that most of the pieces were still clinging to the cloth the map was originally mounted on, it would have been completely shattered," says Susan Russick, who led the team of library conservators that restored the map.

It took five conservators almost 100 hours to repair and stabilize the map. The process--which is documented in a four-minute video--began with removal of the loose dirt and debris. Then a gentle water bath rinsed away decades of accumulated grime, removed soluble degradation products, and softened the adhesive that had held the cloth lining in place.

Next, the original cloth lining was removed -- an extremely delicate and tedious process during which the technicians had to ensure that the fragments remained in place. The map was re-lined, this time with six sheets of Japanese tissue paper. Only then, with the fragments properly secured, could the technicians carefully dissolve the original, badly discolored varnish.

Finally, a few bald patches were shaded in with watercolor. “Where the fragments had actually fallen off, we didn’t attempt to re-create any of the original design or lettering,” Russick says. “It’s not our goal to make a document like this appear new again. But we will make non-invasive improvements so that its imperfections and discolorations aren’t the first thing you notice when you look at it.”

Of course, having brought the map "back from the grave," another goal is to extend its life as long as possible. It's still extremely valuable as a research tool, says Archivist Leonard, because it actually turns out to be an important key to many of the University's other Evanston property records. Many of these are organized by original block and lot numbers rather than by contemporary street addresses. For most properties platted before 1876, these lot numbers appear on the map and can easily be matched with those street addresses. But repeatedly unrolling the map, or even hanging it in a publicly accessibly place, would subject it to wear and tear that would ultimately shorten its lifespan.

"Thanks to digitization, it's now available to anyone with access to a computer terminal," Leonard says. "That's an example of sophisticated technology helping us ensure that a rare and valuable historical document is going to be around for a long time.”

For more information, contact Clare Roccaforte, c-roccaforte@northwestern.edu or 847-467-5918.

"Best of Bologna" Showcases Children's Illustrators

UPDATE: EXHIBIT EXTENDED THROUGH JANUARY 4, 2010
At a new Northwestern University Library exhibit, works by 23 talented children's illustrators from around the globe confirm the fact that kids' books aren't just for kids. "Best of Bologna: Edgiest Artists of the 2008 International Children's Book Fair" presents a selection of artists chosen from an original pool of more than 3,000 who entered a competition to be featured at the world's largest and most important annual children's book event.

"Usually, fewer than 100 artists are selected for the show," says Associate University Librarian Jeff Garrett, who has served on past juries and curated the exhibit along with Kim Specht. "There are no selection criteria, and jurors from different countries will often disagree violently about what constitutes interesting art. So when the arguments die down, the final selection represents a really fascinating look at trends in international book illustration."

The exhibit includes personal statements from the illustrators, offering intriguing glimpses into the ideas and experiences that inspire these artists. Alenka Sottler, whose images incorporate blocks of printed type, says this technique recalls the frugal circumstances of her socialist Slovenian childhood. "[H]ardly anything could be purchased," she recalls. "My mother, employed by the largest newspaper, Delo, brought home cuttings of used paper from the printing house. My father, a sculptor, would always sketch his plans on the printed articles due to the shortage of paper."

Chun Sheng Tsou created the character "Mr. Chip" to articulate the issues of cultural, linguistic, and financial dislocation he felt in coming from his native Taiwan to study at the Royal College of Art in London for a year. "It all began when I was having the traditional British food—fish and chips," he says, "and one question suddenly emerged in my mind. Why does the fish (higher value) always have to be devoured before the chips (lower value)?"

Argentinian artist Hernan Canellas says that in his illustrations for a story about a boy who is looking for his lost bird, "I've tried to create a mysterious and melancholic mood through the use of simple lines….I draw for children while not thinking of them as children…I try to use colors, concepts and atmospheres that can be enjoyed by people of all ages; I believe that beautiful shapes do not belong to any particular age."

Located in the upper lobby of Deering Library (accessible through the Main Library entrance at 1970 Campus Drive) the "The Best of Bologna" exhibit is free and open to the public Monday through Friday from 8:30 to 4:30 p.m. and Saturday 8:30 a.m. to noon, through January 4, 2010. For more information, call 847-467-5918.

Exhibit Explores "The Rise and Demise of Album Art"

There are certain album covers as familiar to Baby Boomers as their own treasured family photos: The original skull-and-roses cover on the Grateful Dead's eponymous 1972 release; the psychedelic, fish-eye portrait of Jimi Hendrix on his 1967 album, Are You Experienced; or how about the striking image of Bach standing in front of a Moog synthesizer that graced the 1968 cover of Switched on Bach, one of the first classical albums ever to go platinum?

"Sound Design: The Rise and Demise of Album Art" is a new Northwestern University Library exhibit that celebrates the glory days of the album cover, explores its dual identity as an art form and a marketing strategy, and mourns the loss of a consumer experience that has been gradually extinguished by the advent of downloadable music.

During the decades when listeners browsed in music stores by flipping through bins full of albums, record companies committed considerable time and expense to developing highly creative and arresting covers for their albums. Alex Steinweiss, the first art director hired by Columbia Records in 1939, was later credited with "inventing the album cover." Several of the 2,500 covers he designed during a 30-year career illustrate how deeply he was influenced by the French and German poster artists of his day. A series of Deutsche Grammophon covers demonstrate the evolution of the company's distinctive crown-of-tulips logo, the brainchild of advertising consultant Hans Domizlaff (1892-1971), who is now recognized internationally as one of the fathers of modern marketing. Deutsche Grammophon produced both classical and popular music recordings, and Domizlaff distinguished those markets from one another by designing independent labels for each genre.

The vast collection of more than 25,000 LPs in the Northwestern Music Library supplied intriguing evidence of how differently record companies decided to market the same musical work or subject. The exhibit includes twelve striking variations of Bizet's opera "Carmen," and seven different versions of Rimsky-Korsakov's and Ravel's "Scheherazade" that range from a detail of a Chagall lithograph to a late-Sixties photo of a heavily eye-shadowed model in a harem outfit vaguely reminiscent of "I Dream of Jeannie."

The exhibit is free and open to the public during the Library's public hours (Monday-Friday, 8:30-5, Saturday 8:30-noon) and runs through September 10, 2009. It was curated by Music Library and Art Collection staffers Greg Macayeal, Stephanie Hewson, Lindsay King, Morris Levy, For more information, call 847-467-5918.