Illustrator Maps Gorgeous Bird's-Eye View Of Ravenswood Streets

By Rachel Cromidas in Arts & Entertainment on May 25, 2017 8:13PM

The illustrator behind Cape Horn Illustrations' beloved house portraits and Chicago landmark art has created a gorgeous, birds-eye view map of Ravenswood.

Check out the view of the leafy Far North Side neighborhood from above, carefully drawn by Chicago architecture-buff Phil Thompson and featuring the CTA Brown Line, the Metra, Damen Avenue, Montrose Avenue, and other local landmarks. Thompson typically draws custom portraits of Chicago homes, commissioned by their owners or occupants, maps of city marathon routes, and other city-themed art. But he told Chicagoist he particularly enjoys making birds' eye-style maps.

"I'm obsessed with bird's eye view maps, I think because they show this interesting mix of planning and randomness, human and group choices, that creates patterns," Thompson said in an email.

Besides his neighborhood, Ravenswood, which took about 40 hours to map, Thompson has made a bird's-eye view of the city's lakefront, and he is hoping to draw Hyde Park or Ravenswood Manor next. One of the main challenges to making the maps is rendering areas where trees are obscuring the street from view. To get around that challenge, Thompson said he had to use a mix of Google Earth and on-the-ground reconnaissance to put the map together.

Thompson said the reception to his work so far has been good—possibly because there are Chicagoans interested in the "quieter side" of Chicago architecture, apart from the city's iconic skyscrapers.

"There are lots of us living in this treasure of a place, and I enjoy taking a step back and presenting it in a new way," he said. "Not the skyscrapers but the neighborhood streets and incredible homes and the hidden details."