New Yorkers are known to have great pride in their city, and this humorous map perhaps best demonstrates a New Yorker's perspective of the United States, with Manhattan, Long Island, and Staten Island dominating the eastern seaboard. New York is shown as the largest state in the US, with Long Island itself depicted larger than both California and Texas. All of the states are distorted and a number of states and cities are mis-located, as they clearly are not important enough for a New Yorker to know exactly where they are. The state of Pennsylvania is called Philadelphia, with Pennsylvania noted as a city in the northwest of the state. New Orleans is shown in Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi are inverted, and Minneapolis and Indianapolis are noted as "Twin Cities" within Michigan. The text at top left states that the city of New York is "a nation within a nation" with 7 million inhabitants. Several decorative vignettes fill the borders of the map with images of a cityscape, the Empire State Building, and a Fifth Avenue Coach bus to the east, while a stagecoach and donkey cross the desert to the west. Created by Daniel K. Wallingford. There were several different editions of this map, this being one of the earliest editions, which was published uncolored. Later editions included an image of the 1939 World's Fair grounds in Long Island. Wallingford's map pre-dates Saul Steinberg's similar brag map, "View of the World from 9th Avenue," which was published in The New Yorker magazine in 1976.

References: Hornsby (Picturing America) pp. 58-59 & plate 9.

Condition: A+

A clean and bright example with hand coloring.