The Forgotten Maps of Bedrock Images

Old maps are cool, there's no doubt about that. But purchasing them, especially large ones, is simply not possible for any but the happy few. Trying to change all that is the team of Alex Toledano and Seth Rosenbaum, who together comprise Bedrock Images, founded last year with a mission to make reproductions of large urban maps of historical interest available to a wide audience. In that they seem to have succeeded, with their site now offering affordable, high-quality reproductions of historical maps of Paris, Rome, Beijing, New York and Washington DC in a range of sizes and formats. Above, a detail from Will Taylor's 1879 portrait of New York shows the Brooklyn Bridge, imagined before its completion.

The business grew out of the duo's time in the archives while working on their Ph.Ds. As they put it, "We found spectacular images that told stories about the history of urban life, swathed in dust and rolled up into tubes and scrolls. We wanted to find a way to make these objects available to the public beyond the walls of museums and libraries." It should be noted that the focus is on very large format maps, which in their day had to be printed on multiple sheets before being stuck together. By assembling these seamlessly and printing them on single sheets of archival-quality paper or cloth, Bedrock Images can thus produce maps that centuries later finally achieve the vision of the original map makers. Pretty neat. Complete map sizes range up to an impressive 8 by 10 feet, with prices in the thousands but detail prints are available for just $50.

The Bedrock Print: 1901 Washington, D.C. The capital of the United States seen before it had grown into a modern metropolis.





The Washington Monument and White House. A detail from 1901 Washington, D.C.





1739 Paris. Every building in the city is intricately drawn in this map of Paris under Louis XV.





The Forbidden City, in a detail from the Beijing 1890 landscape painting.