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A contemporary plat map showing the location of a lot for sale

A plat in the U.S. is a map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. Other English-speaking countries generally call such a document a cadastral map or plan. U.S. General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Surveys to show the distance and bearing between section corners, sometimes including topographic or vegetation information. City, town or village plats show subdivisions into blocks with streets and alleys. Further refinement often splits blocks into individual lots, usually for the purpose of selling the described lots; this has become known as subdivision. After the filing of a plat, legal descriptions can refer to block and lot-numbers rather than portions of sections.^[1]

In order for plats to become legally valid, a local governing body, such as a public works department, urban planning commission, or zoning board must normally review and approve them.

Types of plats/plans[link]

A plat of consolidation or plan of consolidation originates when a landowner takes over several adjacent parcels of land and consolidates them into a single parcel. In order to do this, the landowner will usually need to make a survey of the parcels and submit the survey to the governing body that would have to approve the consolidation.^[2]

A plat of subdivision or plan of subdivision appears when a landowner or municipality divides land into smaller parcels. If a landowner owns an acre of land, for instance, and wants to divide it into three pieces, a surveyor would have to take precise measurements of the land and submit the survey to the governing body, which would then have to approve it.^[3] A plat of subdivision also applies when a landowner/building owner divides a multi-family building into multiple units. This can apply for the intention of selling off the individual units as condominiums to individual owners.^{[citation needed]}

A correction plat or amending plat records minor corrections to an existing plat, such as correcting a surveying mistake or a scrivener's error. Such plats can sometimes serve to relocate lot-lines or other features, but laws usually tightly restrict such use.^[4]

A vacating plat functions to legally void a prior plat or portion of a plat. The rules normally allow such plats only when all the platted lots remain unsold and no construction of buildings or public improvements has taken place.

Other names associated with parcel maps are: land maps, tax maps, real estate maps, landowner maps, lot and block survey system and land survey maps. Parcel maps, unlike any other public real estate record, have no federal, state or municipal oversight with their development.

Reasons for platting[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

An 1878 plat map of Transitville (now Buck Creek, Indiana)

• Designation of roads or other rights of way.
• Ensuring that all property has access to a public right of way. Without such access, a property owner may be unable to utilize his or her property without having to trespass to reach it. The platting process restricts the fraudulent practice of knowingly selling lots with no access to public right of way without revealing that such access does not exist. (Property that does not have access to public right of way may be sold, provided that the buyer is aware of the lack of a public means of access by water or land.)
• Creation or vacation of easements.
• Dedication of land for other public uses, such as parks or areas needed for flood protection.
• Ensuring compliance with zoning. Zoning regulations frequently contain restrictions that govern lot sizes and lot geometry. The platting process allows the governing authorities to ensure that all lots comply with these regulations.
• Ensuring compliance with a land use plan established to control the development of a city.
• Ensuring that all property has access to public utilities.

Reading a plat[link]

Plats contain a number of informational elements:

• The property boundaries are indicated by bearing and distance. The bearing is in the format of degrees, minutes, seconds with compass point letters before and afterward to indicate the compass quadrant. For example N 38 00 00 E is 38 degrees into the northeast quadrant or 38 degrees east of north. Similarly S 22 00 00 W is 22 degrees west of south. Note that north here is true north, so magnetic orientation must be corrected for magnetic declination.
• The certification note provides information on the surveyor and is the location where recent US plats place the flood survey code in accordance with the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968.
• The north arrow is familiar to most map readers
• The title block and lot numbers provide information specific to a development or land use plan
• An easement is usually indicated by a dashed line, although it is also common to have to look them up in supplementary documents (such as a title report)
• Streets are usually indicated by a graphical outline of the right of way, and sometimes depicts the paved area.

History[link]

The creation of a plat map marks an important step in the process of incorporating a town or city according to United States law. Because the process of incorporation sometimes occurred at a courthouse, the incorporation papers for many American cities may be stored hundreds of miles away in another state.

For example, to view the original General Land Office plat for the city of San Francisco, California, filed in 1849, one must visit the Museum of the Oregon Territory in Oregon City, Oregon, then the capital of the Oregon Territory and the site of the closest federal land office. This happened because California did not gain statehood until 1850.

See also[link]

• Lot and Block survey system
• Plat of Zion

References[link]

External links[link]

Look up plat in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Survey drawings

• The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

The Christian Dior Home and Museum in Granville (Manche), France.

Christian Dior (French pronunciation: [kʁistjɑ̃ djɔːʁ]) (21 January 1905 – 23 October 1957) was a French fashion designer, best known as the founder of one of the world's top fashion houses, also called Christian Dior.

Early life[link]

Christian Dior was born in Granville, a seaside town on the coast of Normandy, France, the second of the five children of Maurice Dior, a wealthy fertilizer manufacturer (the family firm was Dior Frères), and his wife, the former Isabelle Cardamone. He had four siblings: Raymond (father of Françoise Dior), Jacqueline, Bernard, and Ginette (aka Catherine).^[1] When Christian was about five years old, the family moved to Paris, France, but still returned to the Normandy coast for summer vacations.

Dior's family had hopes he would become a diplomat, but Dior was artistic and wished to be involved in fashion. To make money, he sold his fashion sketches outside his house for about 10 cents each. In 1928, Dior left school and received money from his father to finance a small art gallery, where he and a friend sold art by the likes of Pablo Picasso. Three years later, after the death of Dior's mother and brother and a financial disaster in the family’s fertilizer business, during the Great Depression, that resulted in his father losing control of Dior Frères, the gallery had to be closed. From then until about 1940 he worked with fashion designer Robert Piguet, when he was called up for military service.

In 1942, when Dior left the Army, Dior joined the fashion house of Lucien Lelong, where he and Pierre Balmain were the primary designers. For the duration of World War II, Dior, as an employee of Lelong — who labored to preserve the French fashion industry during wartime for economic and artistic reasons — designed dresses for the wives of Nazi officers and French collaborators, as did other fashion houses that remained in business during the war, including Jean Patou, Jeanne Lanvin, and Nina Ricci.^[2][3] While Dior dressed Nazi wives, his sister Catherine (1917—2008) served as a member of the French Resistance, was captured by the Gestapo, and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she was incarcerated until she was liberated in May 1945.^[4]

The Dior fashion house[link]

On 16 December 1946 Dior founded his fashion house, backed by Marcel Boussac, a cotton-fabric magnate. The actual name of the line of his first collection, presented in early 1947, was Corolle (literally the botanical term corolla or circlet of flower petals in English), but the phrase New Look was coined for it by Carmel Snow, the editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar. Dior's designs were more voluptuous than the boxy, fabric-conserving shapes of the recent World War II styles, influenced by the rations on fabric.^[5] He was a master at creating shapes and silhouettes; Dior is quoted as saying "I have designed flower women." His look employed fabrics lined predominantly with percale, boned, bustier-style bodices, hip padding, wasp-waisted corsets and petticoats that made his dresses flare out from the waist, giving his models a very curvaceous form.

Initially, women protested because his designs covered up their legs, which they had been unused to because of the previous limitations on fabric. There was also some backlash to Dior's designs due to the amount of fabrics used in a single dress or suit. During one photo shoot in a Paris market, the models were attacked by female vendors over this profligacy, but opposition ceased as the wartime shortages ended. The "New Look" (a name given it by American fashion-magazine editor Carmel Snow) revolutionized women's dress and reestablished Paris as the center of the fashion world after World War II.

Death[link]

Dior died while on holiday in Montecatini, Italy on 23 October 1957. Some reports say that he died of a heart attack after choking on a fish bone.^[6] Time's obituary stated that he died of a heart attack after playing a game of cards.^[7] However, the Paris socialite and Dior acquaintance Alexis von Rosenberg, Baron de Rédé, stated in his memoirs that contemporary rumor had it that the fashion designer succumbed to a heart attack after a strenuous sexual encounter. Some even think that he died because of a seizure. To this day, the exact circumstances remain undisclosed.

Dior was a bachelor.

Tributes[link]

The Paul Gallico novella Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris (1958, UK title Flowers for Mrs Harris) tells the story of a London charwoman who falls in love with her employer's couture wardrobe and decides to go to Paris to purchase herself a Dior ballgown.

A perfume named Christian Dior is used in Haruki Murakami's novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as an influential symbol placed at critical plot points throughout.

The English singer-songwriter Morrissey released a song titled "Christian Dior" as a b-side to his 2006 single "In the Future When All's Well".

American Rapper/Producer Kanye West released a song titled "Christian Dior Denim Flow" as a 2010 Fashion Week single.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Christian Dior official website
• Christian Dior designer profile at Fashion Model Directory
• A biography of Christian Dior
• Sewing patterns by Christian Dior
• "'Bar' Suit and Hat". Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1486_couture/exhibHighBarSuit.php. Retrieved 11 November 2007. 
• "Zémire evening ensemble". Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1486_couture/exhibHighZemire.php. Retrieved 13 November 2007. 
• Photos of Dior and Samples of New Look Fashion
• "Interactive timeline of couture houses and couturier biographies". Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1486_couture/explore.php. 
• [1] Documentary film Christian Dior, The Man Behind The Myth
• Christian Dior at Chicago History Museum Digital Collections