Mapparium: walk-through globe

The intrepid travelers at Curious Expeditions recently visited Boston's Mapparium, a three-stories-tall glass globe that you can walk through. Built in 1935, the dome was designed so that visitors could examine a model of the Earth without the distortion of perspective that accompanies looking at a globe's exterior. Interestingly, the Mapparium is housed at the Christian Science Publishing Society's headquarters. From Curious Expeditions:

The Christian Science Monitor was a serious and respected publication, and every newspaper worth its snuff had to have an impressive headquarters. The Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston is just that. In 1930, Boston architect Chester Lindsay Churchill was commissioned to design the new Christian Science Publishing Society headquarters. A beautiful lobby, dubbed “The Hall of Ideas”, is complete with a grand water fountain, marble floors, and one-of-a-kind globe lamps (one showing constellations and the other showing the ocean’s currents). But a grand entrance wasn’t enough. After all, the New York Daily News building had that famous first class gigantic spinning globe. How could the Christian Science Monitor compete with such cosmopolitan worldliness? With an even better globe, of course.

A World Frozen in Time

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Anonymous

I remember seeing this as a kid. Funny, though, in my memory, the continents were all reversed, as if you were looking at the world from the inside out. Apparently, that’s not the case, but in my memory that made sense because of your perspective from the inside of the globe.
jmnugent

Yes.. someone definitely needs to do a 360 QTVR of this. Please Please Please!! :)
Piers W

Earth viewed from space by Cyrus Reed Teed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Teed
mdh

The scale and the detail are astounding.

The more modern DeLorme globe (Eartha)a couple hundred miles north in Freeport is also pretty impressive
mworden

We used to go there often when playing hooky from high school. The acoustics are insane. You’re basically in the middle of a 360-degree parabolic dish. Trippy.
Anonymous

The acoustics in there are incredible and people whispering 10 feet away sound like they are in your head. It is basically like being sandwhiched betweeen two parabolas, so if you ever wante dto know what it is like to hear voices in your head giggling about Lake Titicaca, go here and check it out. The article’s comment about it being a nifty whispering gallery doesn’t quite do it justice. What I would give to record a drum set in there…
el_rey_misterioso

The following image provides a better sense of scale and visitor experience: http://graphics.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2007/12/20/1198171630_3282.jpg
Neon Tooth

Also featured on the cover of the Unwound album “Challenge for a Civilized Society”

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/unwound/challenge_for_a_civilized_society/
Cochituate

My school (Cochituate Elementary, of course) made a field trip to this map in the 1960s, and I thought it was a blast. I was enough of a map geek even in those days to point out that the map had gotten inaccurate with the large number of African nations that had come into being in that time period.

From what we can see of the Baltic in this photo, it doesn’t look like they’ve ever kept up with the changing dynamic that is the world. Maybe since the Monitor newspaper has been folded, they can save enough money to update this treasure…
Space Toast

After passing through the globe, one might hasten to add, the tour is pretty much complete. The Mary Baker Eddy Library itself is a small and apparently well-funded museum dedicated to the unenviable task of edifying Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist (i.e. Christian Science). It’s a bit like getting a multimedia, 21st century pitch for Theosophy.

Curiously, the Boston headquarters of the Church of Scientology is only a few blocks away, if you know where to look.
Anonymous

My father took me there once, it IS very cool. Apparently they have NO interest in updateing it, regarding it more as a “snapshot in time” of the pre WWII world. While you’re lookig at the Baltic, notice the little yellow dot the “free city of Danzig.”
exst

My favorite part of Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories Interpreter of Maladies takes place in the Mapparium. I’m glad to see a picture of it.
Iscah

The Monitor has not folded, in the sense that the Rocky Mountain News has. It will come out as a 40 page, weekly news magazine beginning mid-April, and continue to publish in full online.

Also, the Hall of Ideas, as described in the article, contains many changes and updates made in the last 10 years, including the fountain and computer-projected words and images which appear on the walls.
Iscah

Oh yes, and the Mapparium is incredibly cool.

And Eartha, the De Lorme globe, is in Yarmouth, not Freeport. I’m quite the pedant today.
Anonymous

My boyfriend absolutely insisted that we visit this when we went to Boston. It’s surprisingly cool, and they do a little show inside every few minutes, lighting up different portions of the map along with a narrative.

Personally I most enjoy the wonderful sound properties of the dome. Fun stuff.
Pfeutzeneutre

Someone put up a QTVR, stat!
FoetusNail

Another place to add to the list of things to see before you die.
Anonymous

I LOVE this place. I live a few blocks away and go when I can. Great date spot. Awesome audio tricks, old school political boundaries: British Mesopotamia, or something like that… you know, what we used to call American Mesopotamia…
Thomas J. Brown

National Geographic has a photo of the globe being cleaned. In my opinion, it’s worth the click-through to see a guy in a little seat at the end of a boom.
curtismayfield

I went there 20 years ago and it’s still a crystal clear memory, that place is so amazing.
gobo

The Mapparium is a must-see. As other people have mentioned, the acoustics are incredible. You can buy recordings made in the Mapparium in their gift shop.