PORTLAND, ME — Fifteen years after their founding, the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education reopened in their expanded, prominent space on the University of Southern Maine campus.
The map library welcomed the public to its new home after being closed for nearly two years. The $12.3 million project provides the map library with four times the space it previously occupied.
Sunday’s event wrapped up several days of festivities that coincided with the map library and center’s 15th anniversary. A lecture on Henry David Thoreau’s maps by John W. Hessler, senior cartographic librarian with the Library of Congress was given Friday. Designed by Koetter Kim & Associates of Boston, the three-story building at the intersection of Bedford Street and Forest Avenue now marks the gateway to the campus.
The highly visible structure is distinctive, in part, because of the aluminum panels that cover the upper levels. More than 100 of them are part of 156-foot long etching of Dymaxion Map.
Private fundraising provided about $7 million of the map library project, state higher education funds provided about $5 million, and a National Endowment for the Humanities grant contributed about $450,000.
Dymaxion map
Scan of a postcard that gives a better feel of what the Dymaxion map looks like.
Jens Claessens: Factory Inc.
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