This superb and very rare pictorial map was published by Bruce Roberts, Inc. the same year that Al Capone was convicted on 5 counts of tax evasion. The map takes a humorous, and at times romanticized, look at the decade-long gang wars that plagued Chicago in the 1920's and early 1930's during Prohibition. The city is divided into gang territories and various gang-related events are described in detail on scrolls. The most prominent of these events is the 1929 St. Valentine's Day massacre (top right) in which Capone's South Side gang executed seven members of the North Side Gang. The skull and crossbones symbol is scattered throughout the map recording other locations were deaths occurred, including Dead Man's Tree on Loomis Street and Death Corner at the intersection of Oak Street and Milton Avenue. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal is noted as "a favorite disposal station" and "Canadian Special" aircraft fly over Lake Michigan to deliver alcohol from the north. The complacency and complicity of the Chicago police is apparent, with officers turning a blind eye to illegal activities. Two insets feature a dictionary of gang terms at top left and an overview of the 1933 World's Fairgrounds at bottom right. Some believe that the rarity of this map is in part due to copies of the map being destroyed in preparation for the World's Fair, as the map portrayed Chicago in a negative light and could potentially discourage tourists.

Every detail of the map has been re-imagined to fit the gang and prohibition themes. The distance scale is measured from "one shooting" to "massacre"; a windhead is blowing on a beer to create froth; and the northern point of the compass rose is a hand shooting a gun, with the "N" appearing in a cloud of gunsmoke. Capone's head, donning a crown and angel's wings, graces the title cartouche. The nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence" has also been rewritten and fills the map border: "Sing a song of gangsters, pockets full of dough; Four-and-twenty bottles make a case you know."

Several respected authorities have attributed the map to Arthur Erickson, though, from our research, there appears little, if any, contemporary evidence to support this. The map was made in the Art-Deco style of MacDonald Gill, a British artist who created the Wonderground map of the London Underground.

This map is very rare; we know of only 6 examples that have been offered for sale in the last decade (3 with Old World Auctions) and only a handful of institutions hold this map including the Library of Congress, Newberry Library, David Rumsey and UW-Milwaukee. Most of these examples have dark coloring including dark green, blue and red, however, a few examples (including the present one) have pastel hues featuring light blue, yellow, orange, and red. These lighter color palette examples were likely the earliest printings with the dark colors appearing shortly thereafter. Due to a printing error, however, the present example is missing the red coloring on the map including various banners, numbering of the scrolls, and the words "Join" and "Cabaret" at center completing "Join the Prohibition Forces and see the Cabaret." A faint outline of these words and the numbered scrolls are just visible in the high-resolution scan.

References: Hornsby (Picturing America) #56; Rumsey #16109.

Condition: B

Issued folding and now flattened and backed with tissue to reinforce and repair a number of edge chips and tears. Most of the edge tears are small and just enter the decorative border, however one tear at bottom extends 1" into the map image. Of the edge chips, only one enters the border at right with a 1.25" portion of the decorative border drawn in facsimile. There is some light toning and dampstaining at lower left which is mostly apparent in the distance scale on recto. An overall good example with a pleasing color palette, though a printing error prevented the red ink from appearing on this example.