Single sheet maps from the 16th through 19th centuries comprise the cartographic collection within the print collection. Many of these maps are not found in the atlases within the Library collection. Of all the maps in the collection the most important is the unique copy of Willem J. Blaeu’s monumental wall map printed on eighteen separate sheets that he issued at Amsterdam in 1605.

The Hispanic Society’s collection of early globes is one of the most important to be found in the Americas, including unique examples not found elsewhere in North America. The 27 globes that comprise the collection were described by Edward Luther Stevenson, the first and only Cartographer of the Hispanic Society, in his landmark study Terrestrial and Celestial Globes; Their History and Construction, Including a Consideration of Their Value as Aids in the Study of Geography and Astronomy, published in 1921 for the Hispanic Society by the Yale University Press. Especially rich in 17th-century globes, the collection includes rare and important terrestrial and celestial globes that date from 1605 to 1789 issued by the most prominent European mapmakers: Willem Janszon Blaeu, Jodocus Hondius the younger, Matteus Greuter, Isaac Habrecht, Vincenzo Coronelli, Domenico de Rossi, Herman Moll, Johann G. Doppelmayr, Gerard Volk, and James Ferguson. Also found in the collection is a rare set of printed and unmounted terrestrial and celestial globe gores from the late 16th century by Joannes Oterschaden.