EmoriaCustom art prints and star maps
Maps · Collection 01

Philadelphia poster, drawn from the real map

39.9526°N / 75.1652°W · United States

Look for the squares. Four sit at the centres of the four quarters of a grid drawn from one river to the other in 1683; the fifth, where the two widest streets cross, carries City Hall. Then look for the line that breaks rank.

You choose the framing, the palette and the words of the caption. The work is drawn from real data, then printed to order in the workshop closest to you.

Compose my Philadelphia poster
What the map shows

A grid from river to river, five squares, and one avenue on the diagonal

The two rivers set the width of the drawing. The Schuylkill curves down the left-hand side, the Delaware runs broad and straight down the right, with a strip of the far shore beyond it. Between them the grid keeps a single orientation from one bank to the other, and its green squares punctuate it at regular distances: a large one to the south-west, two to the east joined by a long strip of lawn, a circle to the north-west, and the central square at the crossing of Broad and Market, right beside the engraved point.

Read on

From that central square an avenue sets off north-west on the diagonal, passes through the circle and reaches the river at the edge of the green of Fairmount Park, top left. That is the Parkway, cut through the grid on purpose more than two centuries after it was drawn. Two other heavy strokes were never in the plan either: the expressway running along Vine Street across the top of the old city, and the motorway along the Delaware. The rail yards beside the Schuylkill, on the other hand, are drawn too pale to count.

Compose your own

What suits Philadelphia

The palette

Two rivers, one ink: the Schuylkill and the Delaware take the same colour, and together they frame the sheet left and right. Give them enough depth that the curve of the one and the straightness of the other read from across a room. The squares take the green of every playground and lawn on the sheet, so they stand out by their shape and their size, not by a colour of their own; a green clearly set off from the streets helps. Fairmount Park, in the top left corner, will be the largest patch of it.

The framing

Portrait, both rivers inside: the curve of the Schuylkill on the left, the Delaware on the right with a ribbon of the far shore. The centre sits slightly east of the engraved point to make room for it. Penn’s rectangle is wider than it is tall, so in portrait it reads as a band across the middle of the sheet, with the grid running on above and below. A landscape frame would hug the rectangle more closely; portrait gives you the curve of the river and the green of the park in exchange.

The caption

The title, one line under it, the coordinates. In a city that numbers its streets, the caption can carry a number of your own: a street, a door, a year.

The sheet
Subject
Philadelphia, United States
Palette
Lezennes stone
Map style
Clean and Detailed
Layout
Label
Typeface
Character · 82%
Framing
Zoom 12.4
Fade at the edges
0%
Format
Portrait
The palette of this poster

Lezennes stone

Sixteen inks, in the configurator’s order. It is not in the catalogue, but you will find it in the palette library, filed under its material.

  • Background
  • Water
  • Greenery
  • Built-up areas
  • Roads
  • Buildings
  • Text
  • Motorways
  • Main roads
  • Secondary roads
  • Minor roads
  • Streets
  • Service roads
  • Paths
  • Railways
  • Borders
Compose with this paletteStart from it to make your own

Opens the colour workshop with these 16 inks in place: change one, keep the rest.

It will wait in your account, ready for any piece.

What the drawing tells

Three facts you can see on the plan

1682Twelve hundred acres between two rivers

William Penn first imagined a city of ten thousand acres, each house on its own large parcel with gardens and orchards. By 1682, when his surveyor began to plot it, he had settled on a site of only twelve hundred acres, on the narrow peninsula separating the Delaware and the Schuylkill. That is why the plan runs exactly from one river to the other: the width of the city is the width of the ground between them.

1683Five squares and two streets of a hundred feet

Penn’s surveyor, Thomas Holme, drew a gridiron of streets with deep, narrow lots and published it in London in 1683. At the centre of each of the four quarters of the rectangular city he placed an eight-acre public square, and at the centre of the city a ten-acre one. Two streets a hundred feet wide, High Street (now Market) from east to west and Broad Street from north to south, meet at that central square, the site of City Hall since 1871. The other streets were typically fifty feet wide, the north-south ones numbered inward from both rivers.

1918A diagonal two centuries later

Between 1871 and 1929, Philadelphia planned and largely built a broad parkway cutting diagonally through the existing grid of Penn’s plan, to connect the crowded business district with the open spaces of Fairmount Park. The design that was built, Jacques Gréber’s of 1917, placed a traffic circle within Logan Square, and the avenue was declared fully open on 25 October 1918. On the sheet, it is the stroke that leaves City Hall on the slant and ends at the river.

Before ordering

The four questions people ask

Can I choose any place, any date?

Yes. The search covers the whole world, from a capital to a hamlet. For the Sky collection, any date works, past or future: the sky is calculated.

What sizes do you offer?

From 21 × 29.7 cm to 84.1 × 118.9 cm, that is A4 to A0, portrait or landscape depending on the material. Every size is shown with its price in the editor.

What materials do you offer?

Four, from the barest to the most dressed.

  • Matte fine art paperA 200 gsm art paper with a deep matte finish: the bare print, to frame as you please.
  • Wooden hangersThe print suspended between two wooden hangers, ready to hang, in the spirit of studio posters.
  • The classic frameThe print mounted under acrylic glass in a slim frame, assembled by hand, delivered ready to hang.
  • Framed canvasThe piece printed on canvas, stretched over a wooden stretcher bar and set in a frame: a gallery presence.
How long does it take?

Making depends on the edition: 1 to 3 working days for Fine Art paper and wooden hangers, 3 days for the poster and the mounted frame, 3 to 5 days for the framed canvas. Transit depends on the country:

Delivered toIn transitIn total
European Union5 to 7 working days6 to 12 working days
United Kingdom2 to 3 working days3 to 8 working days
United States4 to 6 working days5 to 11 working days
CanadaNational deliveryGiven at dispatch
AustraliaNational deliveryGiven at dispatch

These are standard delivery times and remain indicative. For a set date, order two to three weeks ahead.

Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece can be downloaded from your account as soon as you order, and an email lets you know the moment it is ready.

All the questions

Your Philadelphia

Which square was yours? Rittenhouse on a Sunday, Washington Square on the way to work, the circle on the Parkway at the end of a run. Choose it, and let the grid do the rest.

Compose my Philadelphia poster