Fifty or so fluffy white balls of smoke spiked with lightning bolts mark the sites of shootings and bombings in A Map of Chicago’s Gangland From Authentic Sources, a 1931 novelty item published for tourists that appears, along with 76 other maps, in the exhibit “Cartographic Treasures of the Newberry Library.” “Designed to Inculcate the Most Important Principles of Piety and Virtue in Young Persons and Graphically Portray the Evils and Sin of Large Cities,” the colorfully sarcastic map covers an area from Waveland to 69th Street and from Lake Michigan inland to “Capone Territory” in Cicero. Notable sites include a “hijacking of giggle water” at Cicero and Garfield and the slaying of Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle in the Illinois Central tunnel at Randolph and Michigan. A nonsensical scale measures distance by body count–one shooting, one murder, double murder, and massacre–and a “Gangland Dictionary” defines “typewriter” as a machine gun and “pineapple” as a bomb.
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Karrow will give a talk titled “The Language of Maps” on Thursday, January 17, at 5:30 at the library, 60 W. Walton, where “Cartographic Treasures” continues through January 19. The lecture’s cosponsored by the Chicago Map Society, and admission is $10, beverages included. Gallery hours are 8:15 to 5:30 Monday, Friday, and Saturday and 8:15 to 7:30 Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. For more information, call 312-255-3700.
