The Man of Commerce is a detailed map that confates human anatomy with the American transportation system. Designed by the cartographer A.F. McKay and published in 1889 by the Land & River Improvement Company of Superior, Wisconsin, the map promotes the city of Superior as a transportation hub and shows the routes of 29 railroads across the United States.
The outline map of North America is superimposed by a cutaway diagram of the human body. The map’s metaphor makes West Superior “the centre of cardiac or heart circulation.” As such, the railways become major arteries. New York is “the umbilicus through which this man of commerce was developed.”
The explanatory notes conclude: “It is an interesting fact that in no other portion of the known world can any such analogy be found between the natural and artifcial channels of commerce and circulatory and digestive apparatus of man.” Use of the human body as a cartographic metaphor dates back at least to the 16th century, to the anthropomorphic map of Europe as a queen in Sebastian Münster’s Cosmography (1570). This map applies this metaphor to North America, beftting in the context of advertising, capitalism, and expansion.
Designed & Developed by: Curves n' Colors | Visual identity by: Wkshps
Subscribe
