A fun, decorative and very rare 1871 map of Boston representing a sort of hybrid between the pictorial map and bird’s-eye view genres. 

The map depicts the Shawmut Peninsula, Back Bay, the South End, and slivers of Charlestown and East Cambridge, along with the street plan, rail lines, public parks, and complex of wharves along the harbor. But the real treat is the pictorial rendering of over 50 major buildings, a mix of businesses, theaters, hospitals, museums, colleges, rail depots, and of course the State House and Bunker Hill monument. One interesting feature is the Back Bay, where the landfill process was still very much a work in progress and no structures are shown west of Clarendon Street. 

This example of the map is printed in black only, but there is also a two-stone variant[1] with blue for bodies of water and a three-stone variant with the water blue and landmasses tinted yellow.

George Hartnell Bartlett (1838-1923)
A native of Surrey, Bartlett’s early career is unclear. At some point he must have trained as a lithographer, because in the mid-1860s he is credited as such on an “Illustrated map of London or stranger’s guide to the public buildings, theatres, music halls, & all places of interest”, published in London by Smith & Son. In 1866 he moved his family to New York City but by 1871 had moved on to Boston. For the rest of his life, I’ll quote from his 1923 obituary in The Boston Globe:

 “George H. Bartlett, principal emeritus of the Normal Art School on Exeter st, died at his home, 216 Pleasant st, Arlington, today in his 84^th year. Mr Bartlett was born in England, studied at South Kensington, and came to Boston in the early [18]70s, when the first great impulse toward art education took shape in Massachusetts….

 

“Mr Bartlett became principal of the South Boston Art School in 1871-2 and became master of the Boston evening freehand drawinf[sic] classes at the same time. He became instructor in the State Normal Art School in 1873, under Walter Smith, and on the death of the latter became principal of the school, a position he held for 30 years.

 

“For half a century Mr Bartlett has been an important influence in the art life of America and was known to many artists and art teachers here.” (The Boston Globe, March 26, 1923, p. 4) 

For some reason I have found no reference to Bartlett’s mapmaking and -publishing activities in the contemporary press. But in addition to the “Illustrated Map of Boston” offered here, dated by bibliographers to 1871, in 1877 he may have been involved in an “Illustrated Map of Paris”. This map has a similar title and format to the Boston and London maps, but bears not his name but that of lithographer “George Warren Bartlett” at 149a Tremont Street. Frankly, I don’t yet know what to make of this.  Then in 1893 our Bartlett published “The Public Schools of Massachusetts”, with a pictorial format similar to that of the city maps, and in 1904 the “Public Libraries of Massachusetts”, which was a somewhat more conventional thematic map.

References
OCLC #36487406, 55740478, and 1329216108, giving a total of five institutional holdings as of September 2025. Boston Engineering Dept., Checklist of Maps of Boston, p. 171, giving the title as “Bartlett’s Pictorial Map of Boston”, which appeared on the pocket folder (not present here). The Checklist describes the map as published in Boston by Daniel Lawrence & Sons, but their name appears nowhere on the map… perhaps it is somewhere on the pocket folder.

[1] By “stone” I mean lithographic stone: For the most part, printing lithographs in color required one stone per color.