Title:
Robinson’s Atlas of the City of New Orleans, Louisiana
Authors: E[lisha] Robinson and R[oger]
H. Pidgeon
Publisher: New York: E. Robinson
Date: 1883
Media: Hand-colored lithographs
Contents: Title page and 30
cartographic plates
Size: Plates measure c. 18”x28” (Plate
26 measures c. 16”x13”)
Scale: Plates 1-15, 18-21: 1 inch = 200
feet
Plates 16 and 17: 1
inch = 250 feet
Plates 22-24,
26-27: 1 inch = 300 feet
Plate 25: 1 inch =
350 feet
Plates 28-29: 6
inches = 1 mile
Plate 30: 1 inch =
1000 feet
Terms of Access: A copy is available to researchers at the N.O. Notarial Archives Research Center and via the links below. Original plates have been retired from active use for preservation purposes.
Introduction: Thirty maps comprise Robinson’s Atlas of the City of New Orleans, Louisiana, published by E. Robinson in New York City in 1883. The title page states that it was compiled from surveys by New Orleans city surveyor and architect John F. Braun. Braun most likely created the maps during the latter part of the 1870s.
Originally created for the use of insurance companies, Robinson’s Atlas is now a rich source of information for wide variety of researchers. Individuals tracing the history of their homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods find a wealth of helpful visual detail in Robinson’s Atlas, including important clues to former street addresses.
The maps indicate existing lots, buildings, and geographic landmarks. The color pink represents brick buildings, and yellow signifies wooden structures. Printed street names are contemporaneous to publication; hand-written name changes were added at a later undetermined date. Street addresses predate the current system, adopted by New Orleans in the early 1890s.
Technical Note: Each plate of Robinson’s Atlas was scanned on a Hewlett Packard PrecisionScan Pro 3.02 flatbed scanner. Since the size of the plates was much larger than the scanning bed, each plate had to be scanned in sections, usually 8. The individual scans were then pieced together using the Photomerge function of Adobe Photoshop CS, which created an image of a whole plate out of the several individual scans of each plate. Researchers should be aware that the images of the Robinson Atlas are composites, not exact replicas, and each plate may contain slight discrepancies from the original. In an effort to provide a useable, readable digital copy, the Notarial Archives presents these images, with the understanding that they are inexact copies.
Each image was scanned in True Color (24 bits per pixel) and saved as uncompressed Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) images at 300 dpi. The merged images were also saved as TIFF images in True Color (24 bits per pixel) at 300 dpi.
Notes on the Table of Contents: Plates are arranged according to New Orleans’ seven municipal districts. Present-day neighborhood names are enclosed in brackets. Example: [Vieux Carré]. Street names separated by a slash indicate multiple boundary streets. Example: Miro/Tonti. A street name enclosed in parentheses indicates present-day name. Example: City Park (Henry Clay)