Hagstrom Company

Hagstrom Map Company is a long-standing map publisher for New York City and environs. It is now a part of the Langenscheidt publishing group.

Founded by Andrew Hagstrom, who emigrated from Sweden in 1916, the Hagstom Company published from at least the 1930's not only subway maps of New York City but also atlasses, borough maps, and detailed and quite colorful maps of midtown Manhattan. The midtown maps, which detail most of the significant buildings (Rockefeller Center, Pennsylvania Station, Sak's Fifth Avenue, etc.) show the changing face of the city's business district, and have started to draw the attention of map collectors.

Hagstrom was knighted by the King of Sweden for his success in America.

For many years, a code was used to internally identify the publication date for Hagstrom pocket maps. The practice ceased in 1978. The code is as follows:

"'H A G S T R O M C X

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0"'

Usually appearing in the lower right hand corner of a map are letters: e.g. G-SR To decipher refer to the chart to locate the letters and corresponding numbers below each letter. In this instance G is 3 and SR is 46. The date is March 1946.The first letter or letters in the code refer to the month, the next two letters refer to the year.