Paris Map 1955 Times Atlas Environs Print - Paris, Versailles, Saint-Denis, Boulogne-Billancourt

John Bartholomew and Son of Edinburgh edited this Paris and Environs for The Times Atlas of the World, Mid-Century Edition, which Houghton Mifflin published in Boston and the Bartholomew firm in London across five volumes between 1955 and 1959. The atlas held 122 colored double-page map sheets and an index of over 200,000 names, and the volumes were arranged by continent, with volume III on Northern Europe coming out first. This is page 68, printed by William Clowes and Son in full color at 1:100,000, and it measures 61 by 49 centimeters with the prime meridian at Greenwich and the Times Atlas wording in the upper left corner. It shows Paris in 1955, a capital in the middle of post-war reconstruction.

Because the scale is 1:100,000, the sheet reaches well beyond the city itself, and the surrounding towns and suburbs are drawn together with the Seine, which winds through the center of the map. The Bois de Boulogne is marked among the major parks, and the network of roads and railways shows how Paris was joined to the towns around it. Colors separate the built-up areas from the green spaces and woods, so the spread of the suburbs can be read at a glance. In the 1950s the region was growing quickly, and a map made at this size records the metropolis just before the ring road and the new towns of the following decades reshaped it.

A Parisian, a traveler who has lived in the suburbs along the Seine, or a collector of twentieth-century atlas cartography will find an exact, modern gift in this map. TheMapVault's other Paris sheet, the Stanford plan of 1872, shows the city street by street at a scale of 1:16,200 with drawings of famous buildings, whereas this 1955 Times Atlas map is a regional picture at 1:100,000 that covers the environs rather than individual streets. The two together show the city before and after a century of growth. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.