Hammond's Bird's Eye View Map of New York To Boston is an unusual map view of the entire coastline of New York City to Boston, including all of Long Island and Cape Cod and the Island of Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and Block Island. The map is a tour de force of transportation systems, showing travel by land, water and air travel. Multiple kinds of aircraft are pictured. Train lines are labeled as are the several steamships serving coastal cities. Large steamships are shown en route from New York north and returning from Boston Harbor and the Islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, their multiple courses marked with hatch lines and light houses identified. Shipping lanes travel through the Cape Cod Canal - opened as a commercial canal in 1914 - and into Massachusetts Bay and Boston Harbor. State borders are marked and labeled. As the orange map covers indicate, landmarks are also identified. The orange map covers show a trio of summer vacationers underway on the deck of a steamship, one member of the party holding the open map in his hand and gesturing with the other to the passing coastline.
The color palette of the map is muted and suggests the light haze of a summer day on the Atlantic Coast from New York to Boston. Cape Cod and Long Island geography are iconic Northeast scenery as seen from an airplane. The coastline is seen in context with the landscape as this map presents more than the shoreline view of coastal charts. The map provides information of many inland features, such as densely developed Brooklyn and rural Connecticut. The scene in the sky with aircraft - three kinds of planes - suggests a busy, modern metropolis. The watercraft and trains also show the people of this region on the move.
The Hammond's Bird's Eye View map presents new, twentieth century means of air travel. The expansive view presented on this compact map suggests an alternative title - a flyer's view of this Northeast coastline. Air travel was becoming a post WWI reality for civilian travel. The point of view of this map therefore is less an imaginary view than it is distinctly a modern aerial view of a pilot or passenger in an airplane.