1933 A Map of the University of Minnesota Drawn from the Stratosphere...
DESCRIPTION
A Map of the University of Minnesota drawn from the stratosphere directly above the river bank on three successive mornings — revealing much of the art of higher education!
College life at the University of Minnesota is turned into one enormous visual joke in this colorful 1933 pictorial map, packed with students, professors, athletes, campus landmarks, and the humor of university life between the wars.
Drawn for the Dayton Company by Minnesota artist Nadine Evers Grill, the map presents a bird's-eye view of the Minneapolis campus from an imaginary vantage point high above the Mississippi River. The wonderfully tongue-in-cheek title claims the university was observed from the "stratosphere directly above the river bank on three successive mornings," while the compass rose provides a scale of "Four Years Equal One Degree." Within this unconventional geography, Grill fills the campus with tiny figures and visual jokes. The football stadium is packed with spectators, the Field House is represented by an enormous basketball hoop, students hurry between buildings, and a sea monster swims in the Mississippi alongside rowers and other river traffic.
Four Years Equal One Degree
Beneath the humor is a detailed portrait of the University of Minnesota during the early 1930s. Academic buildings, athletic facilities, streets, bridges, and the Mississippi River establish the recognizable geography of the campus, while Grill's illustrations capture the activities taking place within it. Football, basketball, academics, social life, automobiles, and student mischief all become part of the landscape. The University seal occupies a prominent position near the center, surrounded by a campus that seems to be in constant motion. Rather than documenting the university solely through its architecture, Grill presents it as it would have been experienced by its students.
The upper-left corner reveals the map's commercial origins. Dayton's University Store advertises departments for "College Gals and Men," a textbook department, and the wonderfully named Tent and Dungeon, where students were promised the opportunity to satisfy their "Collegiate appetites at very moderate prices." The Dayton Company, Minneapolis's famous department store, operated the University Store to serve the large population surrounding the campus. Commissioning a humorous map allowed Dayton's to advertise itself without producing something that looked like an advertisement. The result was a colorful souvenir that students and alumni might actually want to keep.
An Evolving Portrait of the University
Grill's 1933 map belongs to a longer and particularly interesting series of pictorial maps of the University of Minnesota. An earlier version dating to 1925 presents the campus in a substantially different form, while the design seen here was subsequently revised and reissued. This example is signed "Drawn for the Dayton Company by Nadine Evers Grill," the name under which the artist was working during the early 1930s. She later worked as Nadine Evers Semans, and later editions of the University map carry the Semans name. By 1940, the design had been reduced to a smaller format and issued with a different color scheme, with further printings following during the 1940s. The 1933 Grill edition therefore occupies an interesting position between the early 1920s map and the more commonly encountered later Semans versions.
The University of Minnesota preserves another example of this 1933 Grill edition, but examples appear considerably less frequently than the later printings. Its scarcity adds interest, but the map's real appeal is the extraordinary amount of University life Grill managed to fit onto a single sheet. Her combination of recognizable geography, cartoons, local references, and inside jokes places the map squarely within the golden age of American pictorial cartography. More than ninety years later, it remains an entertaining record of the University of Minnesota and the businesses, traditions, athletics, and student culture that surrounded the campus during the early years of the Great Depression.
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