Take Me to Coney Isola

Here’s the the map of the month from Brooklyn Historical Society:

This month’s featured map is from the Gazzettiere Americano, an atlas published in Livorno, Italy in 1763. The map shows New York Harbor and surrounding areas, and includes a number of Brooklyn references. If you look closely, you will see the following names on the Brooklyn area of the map: Bushwick, Brockland, Redhook, Flatland, Flatbush, Gravesend, Utrecht, and Coney Isola. The small numbers on the map are called soundings and they represent water depths. Soundings were commonly featured on early nautical charts and maps and are still used today in navigation.