Connecticut Map 1935 Pictorial Print - New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport

Ruth Taylor White drew this pictorial map of Connecticut for Our U.S.A., A Gay Geography, a whimsical cartoon atlas published by Little, Brown, and Company in 1935 with text by Frank J. Taylor, covering all 48 states in fifty-eight full-color illustrated sheets. This sheet appears on page 21 of the atlas, printed in bright lithographed color and filled with small hand-drawn scenes rather than any conventional survey detail, a style built to entertain a Depression-era audience as much as inform it. Connecticut is shown here through its industrial towns and its academic reputation, the two identities that most shaped the state's popular image in the 1930s. Ruth Taylor White and Frank Taylor built the atlas as a joint effort, her illustrations paired with his short, wry captions, and the finished sheets sold well enough during the Depression that Little, Brown kept the title in print for several years after its first release.

Factories, workers, and products such as a spool of thread and a loom are illustrated across the state, representing Connecticut's long-standing textile and manufacturing industries. Musical notes are drawn near New Haven, likely a nod to the academic and cultural life associated with Yale University there. Smaller towns are each given their own illustration tied to a specific local product or trade. Together the factory imagery and the Yale reference sketch a Connecticut defined by the pairing of industrial manufacturing with an established academic tradition. A scattering of smaller mill towns is worked into the map alongside the larger illustrations, each tied to its own textile or manufacturing specialty that fed into the state's broader industrial identity.

Anyone with roots in Connecticut's old mill towns, or a connection to Yale, will recognize this map's take on the state immediately, and it makes a distinctive gift for anyone who prefers a whimsical, Depression-era view of Connecticut to a conventional antique survey. The store's other Connecticut editions include Bradford's 1838 atlas and the nine-state 1857 Rogers & Johnston sheet, both standard survey-style cartography; this 1935 Little, Brown sheet is the only pictorial, cartoon-style map of the state the collection carries. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.