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district, and the reduction of these points to a general coordinate system. 2. The surveying, in relation to the new coordinate system, of existing street monuments and reference points, and of existing buildings, fences, bound-stones, and other evidences of ownership; and the preparation of general topographical maps. 3. The determination of the correct location of the legal boundaries of streets and public properties, and the translation of the old descriptions, running lines, etc., into terms of correct descriptions related to the new coordinate system. 4. The verification or correction of the legally established street profiles in terms consistent with the real distances and levels. 5. The setting of additional street monuments. 6. The draughting and publication of maps.

The maps might ultimately include the following Maps features, every one of which is to be found in the maps of one or another of the progressive cities of this country and Europe, and many of them in all.

(a) A general one-sheet map of the city and vicinity, showing the streets, the boundaries of civil divisions, the coordinate system, and the locations of primary reference points and bench marks. This will serve as an index to the maps on a larger scale.

(b) A general topographical map in sections, to be published by lithography, one sheet at a time as completed, on a scale of (say) 200 feet to the inch, showing all existing streets and roads, buildings, property lines, surface grades (by contours and points) and other topographical features, and all monuments and benches. This might be, and should be, so arranged that new and corrected editions of individual sheets could be gotten out at reasonably frequent intervals so as to keep it permanently up to date. Moreover it could well be made to serve all the purposes of the inaccurate but useful real estate atlases now gotten out by private enterprise. A charge of (say) twenty-five cents a sheet would cover the cost of printing, and, if some form of loose-leaf atlas cover were gotten out into which new editions of single sheets could be inserted, the public could obtain, at no extra cost to the city, and for a price about equal to that charged for the ordinary real estate atlas, a much more useful and accurate and up-to-date volume. Of course this map would serve all the purposes of the assessors' maps far better than anything they have now, and, if

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Last modified on 22-Dec 1999
Design format: copyright 1997-1999 Bruce S. Cridlebaugh
Original document: Frederick Law Olmsted, 1910