Brand / Publisher: American Automobile Association (AAA), in cooperation with the Massachusetts Division AAA.

Item: Vintage original 1962 folding city and highway map titled "Boston and Vicinity," featuring a detailed street plan and points-of-interest guide for Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline together with an area road map of the greater Boston region.

Country of origin: United States.

Format: Large double-sided multicolor paper sheet that folds down to a tall glovebox-size brochure, with one side devoted to a densely detailed Boston–Cambridge–Brookline street map and the reverse side presenting an expanded regional highway map of Boston and vicinity with route numbers, suburban communities, and a comprehensive place-name index.

Front cover design features a painted wooden signboard reading "Boston and Vicinity" mounted against a light brick wall, arranged above a patriotic still life of a colonial-style drum, lantern, draped American flag, and boxed compass, with the blue AAA oval logo and the imprint "American Automobile Association" along the bottom margin. Small text notes that the map is published for the exclusive use of AAA members and is not for sale, with a 62-5 printing code at the lower right corner.

The primary city side opens to a large color plan headed "Points of Interest Boston–Cambridge–Brookline," showing neighborhoods, numbered streets, parks, the Charles River basin, and surrounding districts, with symbols identifying controlled-access highways, divided highways, main highways, interstate and U.S. route numbers, state route numbers, AAA offices, and the Freedom Trail. A scale bar labeled in feet notes that one inch equals approximately 850 feet, and compass roses and grid letters help users locate streets.

Along the right margin of the city side, text panels titled "Principal Attractions" and "Where to Stop" describe major historic sites, museums, and landmarks in Boston as well as recommended hotels and motor courts for AAA members, while extensive indexes along the lower and side borders list hotels, theatres, schools and colleges, hospitals, and miscellaneous points of interest keyed by grid coordinates.

The reverse side carries a broader highway map of the Boston metropolitan area and surrounding Massachusetts countryside, with coastal outlines, lakes, rivers, numbered state and U.S. routes, toll roads, and connecting towns, accompanied by an alphabetical index of place names and a small inset showing Boston in relation to the wider New England road network.

An imprint within the points-of-interest legend states "Issued Annually in the Spring—1962 Edition" and credits preparation by the American Automobile Association, Washington, D.C., in cooperation with the Massachusetts Division AAA, underscoring this as an early 1960s AAA member service piece.

This example shows some contemporary handwritten ink notes and circles on the cover and within the map panels, marking particular routes and locations as seen in the photos, and makes an appealing piece of Boston and New England road travel ephemera for collectors of vintage AAA maps, mid-century city planning, or American automobile club memorabilia.