anyone know the history of the historic 'Hammond Map Building' on Valley? archived
Feb 27, 2010 at 2:31pm Edited
When I moved here in 1997 the Hammond Map building was the Hammond Map Company.
There was a display about that building at the Durand-Heddon House Balch exhibit last weekend. The building was previously a factory for the Orange Screen Company (or something like that - founded by Balch) and was later sold to the Hammond Map Company.
The Hammond Map company used to have wonderful sales of overstocks once a year...everything from globes, atlas', maps of cities around the world, to miscelaneous educatonal materials. Almost everything was $5 and under. It was nirvana for parents and teachers in the local area.
http://www.rustbelt.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/99-Passing-of-History-Hammond.html
This was about all I could find when I googled Hammond Map Company. Sad. Even Wikipedia didn't have anything.
This was about all I could find when I googled Hammond Map Company. Sad. Even Wikipedia didn't have anything.
The husband of a friend used to work for the Hammond Map Company. According to my friend, the company folded because Mr. and Mrs. Hammond got a divorce. The company was one opf the couples' assets, and was liquidated in order to be divided between them.
Feb 27, 2010 at 6:27pm Edited
The Hammond Map Company did well during the age of print technology, and the Hammonds were a leading Maplewood family. However, with the advent of the computer and internet, books of maps succumbed to online free map services and offerings. The company tried to partner with various computer based services, but eventually was bypassed by the technological revolution. The current professional building, although using the Hammond name, was built on the property after it was sold to a developer, and the original building torn down.
Interesting to know about Orange Screen--I have two small screen doors with "Orange Screen" tags on them. Always wondered about the company. I'll have to head down to the exhibit.
Jasmo - I think the building was remodeled, not torn down. Maybe they took down parts of it. It still looks basically the same in the front, but with a modern color scheme.
For decades on end, they drew the world
Sunday, June 11, 2006
BY JUDY PEET
Star-Ledger Staff
People paying their respects to Herbert Pierce, 87, and Caleb Hammond, 90, as they lay next to each other in a Maplewood funeral home last week were saying goodbye not just to old friends, but to an era.
For half a century, the two men worked side by side, making some of the best maps in the world at what was called one of the nicest companies in Maplewood.
Together, they took the company founded by Mr. Hammond's grandfather in 1900 and built it into a cartographic giant, second only to Rand McNally in Chicago. At the same time, Mr. Hammond created a workplace where family mattered and few employees left.
"It was a sweet little company," recalled Mr. Hammond's daughter, Beth Lynn Steele, 63. "I'm really sad that it's gone."
There are still Hammonds and there is still a Hammond World Atlas Corp., but the company is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Langenscheidt Publishing Group, a German publishing behemoth whose other acquisitions include Hagstrom Maps, American Map Corp., Berlitz and the World Almanac.
In its heyday in the early 1960s, Hammond employed 120 draftsmen, artists and researchers at its comfortable, paneled offices an easy walk from the quaint Maplewood village center.
Now the maps are reproduced by a half-dozen computer technicians at a generic office complex in Springfield (and reviewers say the quality of the maps remains high). The only person left who remembers Hammond of the old days is an elderly secretary.
She won't tell her age or name because she is afraid Langenscheidt might notice she reached retirement age when Jimmy Carter was still in office. She stays, she says, because she always liked the job and she's still good at it.
Most of the employees, however, left in the mid-1990s, when "it became obvious that the company could no longer survive," said former editor in chief Chuck Lees.
"What is ironic is that we were the company that was responsible for the demise of beautiful, handmade paper maps," said Lees, now 73, who was with the company for 40 years before leaving in 1997. "We were a company of old-timers who made ourselves obsolete."
What killed Hammond as a local, family-owned company was computer technology.
For centuries, maps were reproduced the same way: hand-drawn on paper and updated by whatever information was available.
In 1990 at Hammond, for example, keeping maps current still meant relying on researchers with extensive sources including the U.S. Board of Geographical Names, the State Department, the CIA, the United Nations and a Budapest-based organization called Cart Actual.
By that time, Caleb Hammond was chairman of the company board of directors, and his son, C. Dean Hammond, was running operations. The son was determined to jump on the technology bandwagon.
With the help of Mitchell Feigenbaum, the mathematical physicist who developed fractal geometry (the formula that predicts chaos), Dean Hammond developed the world's first digitized world atlas, published in 1992.
It was a work that took five years and millions of dollars to develop. The digital software revolutionized the map world, paving the way for Internet maps. And, admits Dean Hammond, it probably ruined the company.
"We made hand-drawing paper maps archaic," says Hammond, now 63. "We no longer needed or could afford our large staff. Then the Internet and global satellite positioning took over and we weren't really needed at all."
Teetering on insolvency, the company sold out to Langenscheidt in 1999. Hammond, who describes himself as a "map freak, but with gadgets, not paper," said he was "relieved not to deal anymore with the drama of a family business."
"I'll always love maps," said Hammond, who now works as a custom calendar salesman. "But that old world is gone."
http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-19/1150000903240730.xml?starledger?obits&coll=1
*******
The quote above is why (IMHO) that the Hammond name will be lost in history:
"What is ironic is that we were the company that was responsible for the demise of beautiful, handmade paper maps," said Lees, now 73, who was with the company for 40 years before leaving in 1997. "We were a company of old-timers who made ourselves obsolete."
Map collectors (like me) have no remorse for a company that took away something that we love. Its equivalent to what the kindle is to book collectors, the end of an era.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
BY JUDY PEET
Star-Ledger Staff
People paying their respects to Herbert Pierce, 87, and Caleb Hammond, 90, as they lay next to each other in a Maplewood funeral home last week were saying goodbye not just to old friends, but to an era.
For half a century, the two men worked side by side, making some of the best maps in the world at what was called one of the nicest companies in Maplewood.
Together, they took the company founded by Mr. Hammond's grandfather in 1900 and built it into a cartographic giant, second only to Rand McNally in Chicago. At the same time, Mr. Hammond created a workplace where family mattered and few employees left.
"It was a sweet little company," recalled Mr. Hammond's daughter, Beth Lynn Steele, 63. "I'm really sad that it's gone."
There are still Hammonds and there is still a Hammond World Atlas Corp., but the company is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Langenscheidt Publishing Group, a German publishing behemoth whose other acquisitions include Hagstrom Maps, American Map Corp., Berlitz and the World Almanac.
In its heyday in the early 1960s, Hammond employed 120 draftsmen, artists and researchers at its comfortable, paneled offices an easy walk from the quaint Maplewood village center.
Now the maps are reproduced by a half-dozen computer technicians at a generic office complex in Springfield (and reviewers say the quality of the maps remains high). The only person left who remembers Hammond of the old days is an elderly secretary.
She won't tell her age or name because she is afraid Langenscheidt might notice she reached retirement age when Jimmy Carter was still in office. She stays, she says, because she always liked the job and she's still good at it.
Most of the employees, however, left in the mid-1990s, when "it became obvious that the company could no longer survive," said former editor in chief Chuck Lees.
"What is ironic is that we were the company that was responsible for the demise of beautiful, handmade paper maps," said Lees, now 73, who was with the company for 40 years before leaving in 1997. "We were a company of old-timers who made ourselves obsolete."
What killed Hammond as a local, family-owned company was computer technology.
For centuries, maps were reproduced the same way: hand-drawn on paper and updated by whatever information was available.
In 1990 at Hammond, for example, keeping maps current still meant relying on researchers with extensive sources including the U.S. Board of Geographical Names, the State Department, the CIA, the United Nations and a Budapest-based organization called Cart Actual.
By that time, Caleb Hammond was chairman of the company board of directors, and his son, C. Dean Hammond, was running operations. The son was determined to jump on the technology bandwagon.
With the help of Mitchell Feigenbaum, the mathematical physicist who developed fractal geometry (the formula that predicts chaos), Dean Hammond developed the world's first digitized world atlas, published in 1992.
It was a work that took five years and millions of dollars to develop. The digital software revolutionized the map world, paving the way for Internet maps. And, admits Dean Hammond, it probably ruined the company.
"We made hand-drawing paper maps archaic," says Hammond, now 63. "We no longer needed or could afford our large staff. Then the Internet and global satellite positioning took over and we weren't really needed at all."
Teetering on insolvency, the company sold out to Langenscheidt in 1999. Hammond, who describes himself as a "map freak, but with gadgets, not paper," said he was "relieved not to deal anymore with the drama of a family business."
"I'll always love maps," said Hammond, who now works as a custom calendar salesman. "But that old world is gone."
http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-19/1150000903240730.xml?starledger?obits&coll=1
*******
The quote above is why (IMHO) that the Hammond name will be lost in history:
"What is ironic is that we were the company that was responsible for the demise of beautiful, handmade paper maps," said Lees, now 73, who was with the company for 40 years before leaving in 1997. "We were a company of old-timers who made ourselves obsolete."
Map collectors (like me) have no remorse for a company that took away something that we love. Its equivalent to what the kindle is to book collectors, the end of an era.
Posted By: bmalibashksaMap collectors (like me) have no remorse for a company that took away something that we love. Its equivalent to what the kindle is to book collectors, the end of an era.
Don't be too hard on old Dean there. He was only a little in front of the pack -- the end was inevitable.
Not that it isn't sad to lose something, just as the impending demise of the paper book (which is still some time off, but also inevitable) is regrettable. But there are no bad guys here.
It was absolutely inevitable. Im actually in the process of looking at a few Hammond maps that I have. Impressive to think that a few people were sitting in a room drawing these freehand aided but some notes from around the world. But as with all companies theyre not going to rely on few collectors to stay in business, and its my guess that they didnt just shut the doors, they all got a pretty nice paycheck for there contributions to cartography.
I dont think theyre bad guys; its just another hurdle for my collection. To be honest their stuff is a little modern for me, now obviously more then ever.
I dont think theyre bad guys; its just another hurdle for my collection. To be honest their stuff is a little modern for me, now obviously more then ever.
flugermongers, they do. 
My daughter is a 'P,' and there were 7 or 8 letters left.
My daughter is a 'P,' and there were 7 or 8 letters left.
Posted By: orzabelleflugermongers, they do.
Um, wha?
You can not reply as this discussion is Closed!
orzabelle