The Geographia Map Company is an independently owned U.S. publisher of road maps. The company is based in Hackensack, New Jersey.[1]
History
Geographia was founded in 1911 by Alexander Gross (1879 – March 23, 1958), a native of Austria-Hungary who had established Geographia, Ltd, a commercial map publisher in Fleet Street in London.[2][3][4] In the immediate aftermath of World War I, the company produced "The Daily Telegraph Victory Atlas of the World" in forty-eight weekly installments.[5]
Arriving in the United States in 1928,[4] Gross initially had the new Geographia produce maps of the New York metropolitan area, and later expanded the company's focus into neighboring urban areas. Beginning in the 1940s, Geographia was based at 11 John Street in New York City. The company entered a period of rapid growth, introducing world maps and atlases, topical maps detailing aspects of World War II, and a catalog of atlases, street guide books ("Red Books"), travel guides ("Famous Guides"), wall maps, and street atlases covering dozens of cities in the United States and Canada.[3]
The company was purchased by the Rand McNally Corporation in the late 1980s, before being re-purchased by its original owners several years later.</ref name="Geographicus"> Based in Hackensack, New Jersey, Geographia publishes a number of folded maps, guidebooks, atlases, and wall maps focusing on the greater New York metropolitan area.
Scope
By the late 1950s, Geographia maps had been introduced in Akron, Atlanta, Atlantic City, Baltimore, Binghamton, Birmingham (AL), Buffalo, Charleston (SC), Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Gary, Grand Rapids, Honolulu, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Louisville, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Montreal, New Orleans, Norfolk (VA), Oakland (CA), Oklahoma City, Omaha, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland (OR), Providence, Richmond (VA), Rochester, St. Louis, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Syracuse, Toledo, Toronto, Washington (DC), Wilmington (DE), among other locales. These folded map titles were housed within a cardstock cover featuring photography of each city's skyline on the front cover, and an alphabetical listing of Geographia's catalog on the rear cover. The maps themselves were large-scale, full color on the detail side, black-and-white on the reverse. Each featured Geographia's characteristic style of cartography, which resembled that of both the forerunner Geographia, Ltd., and the subsequent Geographer's A-Z (also based in the UK). These maps were often distributed by local newsagents, a strategy also employed by a number of Geographia's competitors.
By the end of the 1970s, the vast majority of this catalog had gone out of print, and has since become rather collectible. A handful of titles in the northeastern United States remained in print into the 1990s.
References
- ^ *"About Geographia". Geographia Map Company. Retrieved January 29, 2024.
- ^ Pearsall, Phyllis (1990), From Bedsitter to Household Name: the history of A-Z maps, London: Geographers A to Z Company, ISBN 9780850392432
- ^ a b "Geographia, Ltd. (fl. c 1910 - 1985)", geographicus.com. Retrieved January 29, 2024.
- ^ a b (March 26, 1958) "Mr. Aleander Gross", The Times. Retrieved January 29, 2024.
- ^ E.A.R. (March 1920). "Review: Three New British Atlases". The Geographical Journal. 55 (3): 220–223. doi:10.2307/1781605. JSTOR 1781605. Retrieved January 29, 2024.