(a) A general one-sheet map of the city and vicinity, showing the streets, the boundaries of civil divisions, the coördinate system, and the locations of primary reference points and bench marks. This will serve as an index to the maps on a larger scale.
(b) A general topographical map in sections, to be published by lithography, one sheet at a time as completed, on a scale of (say) 200 feet to the inch, showing all existing streets and roads, buildings, property lines, surface grades (by contours and points) and other topographical features, and all monuments and benches. This might be, and should be, so arranged that new and corrected editions of individual sheets could be gotten out at reasonably frequent intervals so as to keep it permanently up to date. Moreover it could well be made to serve all the purposes of the inaccurate but useful real estate atlases now gotten out by private enterprise. A charge of (say) twenty-five cents a sheet would cover the cost of printing, and, if some form of loose-leaf atlas cover were gotten out into which new editions of single sheets could be inserted, the public could obtain, at no extra cost to the city, and for a price about equal to that charged for the ordinary real estate atlas, a much more useful and accurate and up-to-date volume. Of course this map would serve all the purposes of the assessors' maps far better than anything they have now, and, if experience in other cities is any criterion, would lead to the discovery of a good deal of untaxed property.
To accomplish the above purposes the best method of reproduction would probably be to have the maps engraved on aluminum sheets, from which transfers can be quickly and cheaply made at any time to a lithographic stone for printing. Such sheets can be readily and indefinitely corrected.
(c) Record sheets at a much larger scale, showing all the information contained on the small scale sheets and also construction details relating to public properties, especially streets, such as pipes, sewers, conduits, etc.; to be prepared at first for limited areas only but gradually extended.
(d) A system of indexing and filing, to include, to keep track of, and to keep up to date, the records of existing physical conditions in areas covered by the surveys. This would include keeping track of the legal instruments affecting the physical conditions within streets and other public properties, or affecting the control over them; such as deeds, ordinances, and other instruments relating to the layout and grades of streets, permits and franchises for the construction or maintenance of anything within them, executive orders for new constructions or changes, and inspectors' reports of new constructions and changes actually made. As a part of this indexing and correcting system, provision could readily be made for periodical transmission of information as to changes in property ownership from the Assessors' Office (originally from the Registry of Deeds) to the Bureau of Surveys, so as to permit keeping the record maps always up to date and accurate. By means of similar transmission of records from the office of the Building Inspector, the record maps could be kept up to date with respect to new buildings. A typewritten multigraph notice of changes and corrections from all sources, made on the record sheets, could be mailed monthly to all the city Bureaus and others having sets of prints, and at longer intervals new and corrected prints of certain sheets would be offered. This would be the same general plan that is followed in regard to changes and corrections on the charts of the Coast Survey and the official Coast Pilot books, where the Notices to Mariners are issued periodically from the Hydrographic Office, and summed up at longer intervals by new editions of the several volumes and of the various charts stamped to show the dates to which they are corrected.
Management and Cost
It would seem advisable to put a first-class man of broad experience and ability in charge; to establish a new division under the Bureau or Surveys, coördinate with the existing force, which is dealing with the current routine work, but distinct from it; and to go at the work with an annual appropriation amounting, after the first six months or so devoted to organization, to say $50,000 a year until the arrears of work shall have been cleaned up.
Sample Maps
The following data in regard to the topographical survey work of New York and of Baltimore is of considerable interest in this connection. There are on file in the office of the Civic Commission single copies showing the kind of sectional topographical maps published by the official surveys of New York, of Baltimore, of the District of Columbia and of Zurich, Switzerland (representing European cities); and a sheet of the large-sized detailed sectional map published by the City of Paris, which covers the whole city at the scale of 1/_{500} or about 40 feet to the inch.