Titled simply New York City, this exuberant 1970 bird’s-eye panorama stakes an irresistible claim: the metropolis as the axis of the modern world. Rendered in isometric perspective, the city rises in colorful tiers, crowned by the Empire State Building and welcomed by the outstretched torch of the Statue of Liberty. The composition is a city map that reads like a manifesto, inviting you to traverse avenues and districts while also glancing outward to global horizons. Flanking panels flatten distant lands—China, Japan, Russia, Ireland, England, France, Spain, and Italy—suggesting that their histories, peoples, and energies converge here. It’s an urban portrait and a world atlas at once, a daring, witty visualization of New York’s magnetic pull in a transformative era.

At the heart of the sheet, Manhattan’s spine and lattice are crisply articulated. Broadway slices diagonally through the grid, colliding with 42nd Street and exploding into the spectacle of Times Square. Fifth Avenue ascends as a boulevard of glamour, while Park and Madison Avenues evoke corporate elegance and Madison Avenue’s advertising lore. Downstream, Wall Street concentrates financial power at the island’s tip. Central Park, a verdant rectangle, breathes order and respite into the density, with 2nd Avenue completing the cadence of named corridors. As a city map, it rewards neighborhood-by-neighborhood reading—Midtown’s glamour, the Financial District’s gravitas—translating urban complexity into legible, engaging iconography.

The artist extends the gaze beyond midtown glitter to the city’s living fabric. Greenwich Village appears as a cradle of counterculture—a 1970s hive of cafés, bookstores, and music clubs whose influence radiates far beyond its narrow lanes. Across the East River, Brooklyn anchors the composition with the suggestion of rowhouse neighborhoods and a creative ferment then beginning to gather pace. The harbor becomes a stage where the Statue of Liberty presides over arrivals and departures, an emblem of aspiration set against working piers and skylines. The Hudson River threads this geography into a single current, turning local streets into a cosmopolitan waterway that carries the city’s commerce, culture, and dreams toward open seas.

Playful cartographic sleight-of-hand dramatizes New York’s reach. Significant American places—San Francisco, Los Angeles, Texas, Miami, and Washington, D.C.—are arrayed as if strung along the Hudson River, collapsing miles into metaphor and underscoring how all roads, flights, and broadcasts seem to flow to Manhattan. Beyond, the sweep gestures to the Gulf of Mexico and outward to the Old World, where side panels parade China, Japan, Russia, Ireland, England, France, Spain, and Italy. These are not mere decorations; they echo New York’s diasporas—Chinatown, Little Italy, Irish and Jewish enclaves—and the transatlantic and transpacific circuits of finance, fashion, food, and art that made the city a planetary clearinghouse by 1970.

The map’s anonymous creator channels the great tradition of twentieth-century pictorial cartography—part guide, part theater, part civic love letter—while distilling the cultural voltage of the era. The isometric vantage and exuberant labels transform thoroughfares like Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue, Madison Avenue, and 2nd Avenue into narrative threads, binding Times Square’s neon, Wall Street’s ledgers, and Central Park’s pastoral calm into a single story. Anonymity lets the city claim authorship, yet the choices are unmistakably editorial: New York crowned, horizons compressed, the world beckoning from the margins. As a city map, it is notable for elevating orientation into argument—an unforgettable snapshot of a place convinced, not without reason, that it was the center of everything.

Streets and roads on this map

• 2nd Avenue
• 42nd Street
• Broadway
• Fifth Avenue
• Madison Avenue
• Park Avenue
• Wall Street

Notable Features & Landmarks

• Brooklyn
• Central Park
• Empire State Building
• Greenwich Village
• Gulf of Mexico
• Manhattan
• Statue of Liberty
• Times Square

Historical and design context

• Created in 1970 by an anonymous artist
• City Thematic and Pictorial map in bird’s-eye, isometric perspective
• Composes New York as the “center of the world”
• Visualization extends from NYC to other U.S. locales and beyond
• Side panels flatten land masses and depict China, Japan, Russia, Ireland, England, France, Spain, and Italy to show global ties
• Colorful illustrations and labels encourage exploration of the urban landscape and points of interest
• Reflects the cultural vibrancy and global significance of New York City in 1970

Looking for a particular place? Review the detailed images to confirm that the town, landmark or feature you have in mind appears on the map. If you are unsure, ask our workshop to check before you order.

Detailed maps are especially rewarding at larger sizes, where names, boundaries and decorative features have more room to be appreciated. Use the close-up preview and size guide to choose the right scale for your wall.

This map looks amazing at sizes all the way up to 70in (180cm). If you are looking for a larger map, please get in touch.

The model in the listing images is holding the 16x20in (40x50cm) version of this map.

Where personalisation is available, you can add a short title or dedication, mark one meaningful place, or request one considered visual detail. See personalised map examples.

Every piece is printed to museum-grade archival standards using fade-resistant pigment inks on acid-free matte paper. Choose an unframed map print, framed map or canvas using the finish options above. Framed maps use crystal-clear optical acrylic and arrive ready to hang.

With its rich detail and strong sense of place, this map makes a considered gift for a new home, anniversary, retirement or anyone with a personal connection to the area shown. Still deciding? Explore our collection of rare old and vintage maps to discover another place, period or style.

This map is also available as a float framed canvas, sometimes known as a shadow gap framed canvas or canvas floater. The map is printed on artist's cotton canvas and then stretched over a handmade box frame. We then "float" the canvas inside a wooden frame, which is available in a range of colours (black, dark brown, oak, antique gold and white). This is a wonderful way to present a map without glazing in front. See some examples of float framed canvas maps and explore the differences between my different finishes.

For something truly unique, this map is also available in "Unique 3D", our trademarked process that dramatically transforms the map so that it has a wonderful sense of depth. We combine the original map with detailed topography and elevation data, so that mountains and the terrain really "pop". For more info and examples of 3D maps, check my Unique 3D page.