“The Ghetto” on a 1926 Manhattan map

I wonder when “ghetto” went from being a perfectly acceptable name for a Jewish enclave in a big city to a word that feels derogatory, almost slanderous?

This 87-year-old map doesn’t use the word as a term of reproach, and countless newspaper articles and postcards from the late 19th and early 20th century refer to the then–heavily Jewish Lower East Side as New York’s Jewish Ghetto.

To contemporary readers, though, it can be jarring to see it on a reproduction of an innocuous map like this one.

Published by Fuessle & Colman, it depicts “the wondrous isle of Manhattan,” with the scale “all askew,” as the legend on the bottom right-hand side proudly states.

Tags: Antique map of Manhattan, Delancey Street in 1926, Ghetto of New York, Jewish Ghetto, Lower East Side map 1926, Lower Manhattan maps, Manhattan in the 1920s, New York City ghetto, The Ghetto Lower East Side