‘America’s Birth Certificate’ on Display

This is no ordinary map. At 36 feet square and nearly 500 years old, it is the earliest-known map of the world that features the name “America,” and it made its national debut Thursday at the Library of Congress.

The 12-panel creation by Martin Waldseemuller cost the library $10 million, paid over several years. The funding came from private and corporate donors and from Congress, which granted $5 million toward the purchase in 2001. It is the single priciest acquisition in the library’s history, officials said.

“It’s America’s birth certificate,” said Irene Chambers, head of the library’s exhibit office.

The black-and-white woodcut print map is the only known surviving copy of 1,000 prints made in 1507, according to the library. Its former home was the castle of Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg in southwestern Germany, where it was rediscovered in 1901.

The map belonged to the prince and his heirs for 350 years and was considered a German national treasure. The government there granted permission for its sale. “I think it was worth it,” said Bette Gordon, a docent at the library who viewed the map, part of the library’s new Lewis and Clark exhibit, for the first time Thursday.

Waldseemuller, a German geographer, was the first to label the continent America, honoring the discoveries of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. He correctly identified America as a continent, bounded by two distinct oceans, while Christopher Columbus envisioned the region as islands adjacent to Asia.

A portrait of Vespucci, compass in hand, is at the top of the map. The map’s kidney-shaped world includes a recognizable Africa, Europe and Asia, complete with cities and major rivers, and an elongated and slightly curved sliver for North and South America. The label “AMERICA” appears approximately where Brazil now is.

“It looks a little off,” complained one passerby. Kris Kamm, who was visiting the library with her family, agreed. “They said on the news it was an amazingly accurate representation of South America; that wouldn’t be my first impression,” she said.

To some visitors, however, the map’s value lay not in Waldseemuller’s precision, but rather in his imagination. “It’s the first visible evidence of anybody even imagining a fourth continent,” Chambers said. “Once you place something like that on a document, all the rest of the exploration and imaginings of journeymen and writers can take place.”

The map, a drawing of a world twice as big as ever before conceived, was “Waldseemuller’s vision,” said Gordon, the docent.

Made of thin parchment paper, the document is in “pristine condition” for its age, Chambers said. “For [it] to have survived 500 years and mark that sort of occasion, the birth of a continent,” it’s worth the $10-million price tag, she said.

Now part of the library’s permanent collection, the map is mounted on special acid-free material and kept under low lighting and controlled temperature and humidity.

The map’s 16th century perspective on a newly expanded world sets the stage for the rest of the library’s new exhibit, “Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America.” The map will remain on display in the exhibit for the next three months, until it is moved to a special Hall of Exploration designed to showcase it, a project that will be completed next year, Chambers said.

Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out in 1803 at President Jefferson’s behest to chart the area from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River. The Louisiana Purchase, made later that year in a deal with France, doubled the size of the U.S. and hugely expanded the scope of their exploratory mission.

Lewis and Clark led 31 men across the continent, chasing Jefferson’s hope for waterways to connect the continent to Asia and Eastern trading partners. The library’s exhibit trails the corps’ winding path, with accounts of some of the flora, fauna and people encountered, and maps that the explorers used.

Chambers marveled at Lewis and Clark and their European counterparts, responsible for documents such as the Waldseemuller map. “People know it’s really kind of wonderful,” she said.