Benjamin Moore Norman (1809-1860) was an American writer, book dealer, and mapmaker born in New York. Among his accomplishments was the published description of a journey to the Yucatan in the footsteps of John Lloyd Stephens. Norman initially took over his father’s bookshop in Hudson, NY, and would later move to Philadelphia. In 1837, he relocated to New Orleans, where he lived for the rest of his life.
Norman is an essential figure in the cartographic history of Louisiana and New Orleans. His most famous maps are a plan of New Orleans, originally published in 1845 (with subsequent editions in 1849 and 1854), and the iconic Chart of the Lower Mississippi River from 1858. Both maps were nevertheless built around the survey work of others. In the New Orleans map, he drew heavily on the surveys of Prussian engineer Heinrich Müllhausen, whereas his Lower Mississippi chart hinged on the work of Marie-Adrien Persac.
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- East & Midwest United States
Norman’s Plan of New Orleans & Environs. 1849.
- $5,500
- Locally published plan of New Orleans, issued three years before the 1852 city charter.
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