Likely the Earliest Printed Plan of Brooklyn

HOOKER, William. [New York, 1827]

Brooklyn/ New York/ African-American History.  HOOKER, William [New York, 1827]  Hooker's New Pocket Plan of the Village of Brooklyn: Compiled and Surveyed by E.C. Ward, U.S.N.S. . . 15 x 18 1/2 inches.  Engraved folding map with original wash color; reinforced chipping & splits along lower margin, mended split right margin, still excellent overall.                                                                                                  

Very scarce, first edition of the earliest printed map of Brooklyn we are aware of; none earlier appears in Phillips' listing of maps in the Library of Congress.  OCLC reports only the Brooklyn Historical Society holding an example of this first edition among institutional collections. 

Depicted on the plan is the nascent village of Brooklyn, then recently incorporated in 1816.  As shown on the plan, Brooklyn then occupied what are today Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Vinegar Hill, the Navy Yard, and some of downtown Brooklyn.  (The name Brooklyn would be generalized to refer to all of King's County in 1896, and that area would become the current borough when New York City was consolidated in 1898.)

The map shows, perhaps for the first time, Brooklyn’s oldest African American church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church on High Street.  It was built in 1818, though the congregation dates to 1766 when Captain Webb began delivering sermons in downtown Brooklyn.  The congregation is still in existence today and operates as the Bridge Street African Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church.  Listed at the right are several other churches, five libraries, three schools, two banks, two insurance companies, four lodges, six gardens, three hotels, one market, a post office, a physician’s office, and, inevitably, "Cunningham's Anchor Gin Distillery and Steam Mill."  Four ferry routes linking Brooklyn and Manhattan are shown.  The map shows a few points of interest in Manhattan, including William Hooker’s Nautical Store on Fulton and Water Streets. It also commemorates Lafayette’s arrival on August 16th, 1824, when he returned to America to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Revolutionary War, an important event marked by great celebrations in New York and throughout the United States at the time.

William Hooker (1797-1856) was an important American mapmaker and engraver, who operated in New York from circa 1810 to 1845.  Even for the period he was something of a rarity as someone who was capable of handling all aspects of producing a map. For this work, he was the engraver, printer and publisher, although it was based on a survey by the naval officer, E. C. Ward.  Hooker probably began his career as an apprentice to Edmund March Blunt (1770-1862), the publisher of the American Coastal Pilot.  Hooker and Blunt operated from the same location--202 Water Street in New York--for many years. Hooker married Blunt’s his daughter, Eliza Carlton Blunt, in 1816.  Hooker’s primary focus was maps of New York City and nautical charts.

Various sources have noted four later issues of the map-- of 1828, 1833, 1836 and 1838--though we found no market records for most of these.

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