PRESS CLIPS

"CITY LORE; Every Map Is a Picture, Every Picture Tells a Story"
By David Leopold , New York Times, March 3, 2002

FOR all the years I lived on East 27th Street, the neighborhood seemed to lack the cultural significance of addresses in TriBeCa, the West Village or the Upper East Side. That is, until I saw a map showing where various books had been written in Manhattan. From that map, I learned that Herman Melville had written ''Billy Budd'' in my corner of the city, and I found myself looking to see the sights Melville might have seen. The map had suddenly made Melville and my life more relevant...

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"After Seven Years of Disputation, a Map Makes Its Debut "
By Michal Lando , New York Times, April 1, 2007

Until the very last second, it was unclear whether Nathan’s Famous, the legendary Coney Island hot dog stand opened by Nathan Handwerker in 1916, would make the cut, and whether Sarah Jessica Parker, who played a racy sex columnist in the television series “Sex and the City,” should be included alongside the likes of Woody Allen and Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Nathan’s isn’t kosher, and Ms. Parker is the daughter of a mixed marriage.

These were some of the issues debated in true Talmudic style by the makers of a forthcoming map detailing the Jewish history and heritage of New York. It was in part because these and similar questions proved so knotty that it took years for the creators of “Jewish New York: A History and Heritage Map” to make their publication a reality...

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"Uncovering Jazz Trails "
By Nat Hentoff , Jazz Times, June 2007

An impetus for jazz-curious folk living in or visiting Queens is a vivid, illustrated “Queens Jazz Trails” map, given out as part of the regularly scheduled “Queens Jazz Trails” tours—showing where these legends lived and other dimensions of the jazz scene there. In time, perhaps there will be jazz-trails maps and tours in other cities.

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"Classroom Extra: Black History Edition"
By Jasmine K. Williams , New York Post, February 5, 2004

There are many heroes of the Harlem Renaissance. Check out a great map and poster guide produced by Ephemera Press at their website: www.ephemerapress.com. Plan a tour of some of the places featured on the map. Be sure to check out Langston Hughes' house and the site of the Mount Morris watchtower in Marcus Garvey Park.

"MILLER'S EPHEMERA PRESS COMIC STYLE MAPS"
BY JENNIFER M. CONTINO , PULSE, March 3, 2004

Some maps are rather boring. Sure most have the important details - such as city names and roads and all the important stuff you need to get from one place to another. But not a lot have gusto or that certain something that makes it much more than just a map, it makes it fun. Marc Miller's Ephemera Press has created a whole new series of maps and postcards based on historical locals in New York. Instead of just making straightforward maps, they've jazzed them up a little by having the maps illustrated by some fantastic artists including Maakies creator Tony Millionaire and Seven Miles A Second's James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook...

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"Maps of The Queens Jazz Trail, The Harlem Renaissance, and The East Village. Published by Ephemera Press, Brooklyn, NY. "
Reviewed By Matt Knutzen, New York Public Library, Cartographic Perspectives; Journal of the North American Cartographic Information Society , Winter 2003

Ephemera Press has produced three touring maps related to the rich cultural landscape of New York City…The first, The Queens Jazz Trail, A Full-Color Illustrated Map is in its second edition…The front side is an illustrative hand drawn map “poster” depicting famous jazz artists and their homes in Queens while the back has a short essay about the importance of Queens as New York City jazz musician’s borough of choice and an address listing of their residences…The portraits and the small drawings of buildings give this map a very human touch while the texts, both on the map and on the reverse side are quite informative...diverse symbology and lucid categorization lends itself to a clearly defined visual hierarchy…The overall effect is an easily understood thematic map...

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"ON THE GO: SEEING MANHATTAN WITH A PICTURE MAP"
By Rhoda Amon, Newsday, September 21, 2003

From Leadbelly to Madonna, poets, artists, writers, musicians, creative souls of every genre have made Manhattan's East Village their home or hangout for more than 70 years. An East Village Pictorial Map makes it possible for visitors to trace the habitats of Charlie Parker for jazz fans, Allen Ginsberg for poetry fanciers, or Jackson Pollack for art lovers. Now another publication from Ephemera Press, "Lower Manhattan: A History Map," just off the press, tells the story of New York City's oldest neighborhood from the arrival of Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524 to the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Other Ephemera maps include Harlem Renaissance and Queens Jazz Trail. Call 718-254-9400 or log into www.ephemerapress.com.

"PAPERVIEW: MAPS OF OUR HEART"
By Carlo McCormick, Paper Magazine, March 2002

What do you get when an obsessive historian of New York's cultural margins teams up with artists of a similar bent? The result is CultureMaps - illustrated masterpieces depicting the city's haunted histories and subcultural lore. Art historian and curator Marc Miller observed, while working on a panoramic model city at the Queens Museum, how "a map is like a magnet that just pulls people in." So Miller teamed up with illustrators Tony Millionaire and James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cooke to create these deftly compacted portraits of the overlapping social and creative lineages that make up the city's neighborhoods...Appreciating maps for their capacity to "condense information clearly," Miller regrets he could not include more. "History," he says, "is cruel."

"ARTNET NEWS: ROMBERGER MAPS THE EAST VILLAGE"
By Artnet.com, February 6, 2002

Legendary East Village cartoonist James Romberger, who opens a solo show of new pastels at Gracie Mansion Gallery this week, also has an outside project - an illustrated street map of the East Vilage, complete with over 60 thumbnail color images of local celebrities and landmarks. Done with his wife and collaborator, Marguerite van Cook, the 18 x 24 inch, two-sided map ranges from "Alan Ginsberg Slept Here," with six addresses, to Andy Warhol's first New York apartment on Avenue A, from the 1950s-era Tanager Gallery at 90 E. 10th Street to CBGB's at 315 Bowery. The back features an annotated and cardiac arresting walking tour with over 60 attractions...

"NEW BOOKS AND MAPS"
Base Line: A Newsletter of the Map and Geography Round Table, American Library Association, March 2004

The Lower Manhattan map, illustrated by Tony Millionaire, tries to be current (with several 9/11 references) and yet cover the whole history of the city with a very selective choice of topics...A nice collectible for New Yorkers and fans of pictorial maps.

"BIBR RECOMMENDS"
By Mondella S. Jones, Black Issues Book Review, January-February 2002

The Harlem Renaissance Map Poster Guide covers the central district of Harlem plus Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill, and the Queens Jazz Trail covers places of interest for jazz lovers in the borough. The maps are well researched and user-friendly...Marc Miller, former museum consultant and founder of Brooklyn-based Ephemera Press, created the maps for students, tourists, locals, or anyone interested in the particularly rich history of these two cultural centers. Tony Millionaire's beautiful illustrations make the map suitable for framing.

 

"NEW BOOKS AND MAPS"
By Fred Musto (Yale University), Base Line: A Newsletter of the Map and Geography Round Table, American Library Association, August 2001

For lovers both of pictorial maps and of New York City, there are two new maps from Ephemera Press. The Harlem Renaissance graphically identifies the homes, clubs, and sites associated with noted writers, artists, and other cultural figures in Harlem. The Queens Jazz Trail illustrates the neighborhoods and sites of musicians in the borough of Queens, the "home of jazz."

 

"A STROLL INTO HARLEM HISTORY"
By Rhoda Amon, Newsday, July 8, 2001


Walk in the paths of jazz king Duke Ellington, boxer Joe Louis and singer Billie Holiday. See the houses, churches, music halls and neighborhoods that inspired writers Langston Hughes, James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. For the past 100 years, Harlem has been a center of African-American culture, a place that gave birth to much of its jazz, art, dance, poetry and passion. Harlem Renaissance, a map, walking tour and wall poster, identifies sites of Harlem history and culture. It’s hot off the Ephemera Press, a Brooklyn-based company that is publishing CultureMaps, a series detailing neighborhoods.

 

"JAZZ IS ALIVE & LIVING HERE"
By Donald Bertrand, Daily News, October 4, 1998

Flushing Town Hall, which hosts jazz concerts and exhibits, has produced a map showing where the musicians lived. The idea came from Marc Miller, an exhibition consultant . . . Miller had produced a Louis Armstrong exhibit at the Queens Museum in 1996. Among the pieces in the exhibit was a 1933 "Jazz Map of Harlem." "I really loved that piece, so I thought: What could be a better format for focusing attention on the tradition of jazz in Queens?" Miller said.