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Rea Estate Promotional Map By Two Music Industry Celebrities
Map of the island of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, prepared for Ward and Virginia French and Eleanor French Booraem, doing business as Tropical Real Estate, "Under the U.S. Flag."
The map shows the location of several roads around town, as well as the offices of French Real Estate and the Charlotte Amalie city limits. A number of other features are shown, including estates, the airport, high school, and major buildings in Charlotte Amalie.
The map would seem to have been published by Music executive Ward French and his daughter, the singer Eleanor French Booream. As noted in the New York Times,
Eleanor French Booraem . . . was a well‐known cafe singer in the nineteen‐thirties and forties . . .
As Eleanor French, she made many appearances at the Stork Club and other cafes in this city and at the Drake Hotel in Chicago. In World War II, Miss French entertained troops with Martha Raye in the Pacific theater for the United Service Organizations.
Mrs. Booraem was the daughter of the late Ward French, who was board chairman of Columbia Artists Management . . .
We find no other records of either the map or the real estate company.
A fascinating bit of Caribbean Americana. A clip of Eleanor French Booraem can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZYl_YSLzYs
![Carte Reduite des Isles Antilles Dressee au Depost des Cartes et Plans de la Marine… [Large Inset of Virgin Islands]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/68206.jpg)
![Amer. Sep. No. 69. Porto-Rico [and the Virgin Islands]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/42102.jpg)
