Our New Meeting Place
Our meetings are now held at the Mid-Manhattan Library, 455 Fifth Avenue at 40th Street, in their sixth-floor Conference Room. The Library is diagonally across the street (and about 500 feet) from our former meeting place—see photo below if you need directions.
With the exception of field trips and special events, our regular meetings are on the second Saturday of each month (except June, August and December). Our meetings are open to the public, and there is no charge to attend.
Show Mid-Manhattan Library location.
See our Newsletter for other map-related events in the New York City area that may be of interest to members. Contact the sponsoring organization for further details about these events.
NOTE: The New York Public Library provides meeting space to the New York Map Society, but the Society receives no financial support nor sponsorship from the Library. Likewise, the New York Map Society and the Mercator Society are entirely separate organizations, with no financial or other business ties between them. The New York Map Society is financially supported solely by dues paid by its members, and no elected officer is employed by the Library.
Our Next Meeting
Saturday, July 14th, 2012 at 2:30 pm
Our Annual “Summertime Social”
As in the past, our guest speaker is—make that, guest speakers are—you, our members and friends. Come to this informal chat, tell us about your mapping interests, topics you'd like to see covered, and anything else that occurs to you about maps and mapping.
We'll have a few more details soon on this.
Future Meetings
(Fall 2012 Meetings to be announced)
Our Last Meeting
Saturday, May 12th, 2012 at 2:30 pm
A Look at the “Marco Polo” Maps: Curiosities and Questions
There exists a mysterious collection of early Italian maps, related cartographic documents, and other manuscript materials—with many apparently connected to the famed travels of Marco Polo. Informally known as the “Rossi Collection” after the name of the original owners, these works seemed to have been passed down to the present owner by way of a branch of the famous Sanseverino clan in Italy. The maps include peculiar renderings of the farthest reaches of Asia, as well as texts in Italian, Latin, Arabic, and even Chinese.
Dr. Benjamin B. Olshin has been working on the Rossi collection of maps and related documents for over a decade, and his talk will present the latest findings and at the same time reveal the many puzzles that these materials present.