Bird's Eye Views: Historic Lithographs of North American Cities - Hardcover

Reps, John W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568981465 ISBN 13: 9781568981468

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998

Synopsis

As new towns and cities spread across the American frontier in the nineteenth century, itinerant artists soon followed, documenting these growing urban centers by drawing aerial perspectives, also known as bird's eye views. Commissioned by land speculators, local businesses, civic organizations, and individual citizens, these renderings fostered both civic pride and local commerce. The use of color lithography, a recent invention popularized by such prominent publishers as Currier & Ives, allowed the inexpensive reproduction of the highest-quality drawings, so that a bird's eye view was within the financial budget of even the smallest towns. These extraordinarily detailed lithographs eventually numbered in the thousands and now serve as a rich pictorial record of North America as it stood a century ago.
This sequel to our highly acclaimed title An Atlas of Rare City Maps collects over 100 views dating between 1835 and 1902, showing the streets, buildings, churches, bridges, waterways, and surrounding countryside of North American towns, ranging from burgeoning metropolitan centers to small logging towns and mining camps. Baltimore, Brooklyn, Denver, Indianapolis, Memphis, Montreal, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Syracuse, and Washington are just a few of the cities presented in this collection. The exquisite color and fine detail of these bird's eye views have been reproduced in all their original glory; also included is an introduction by John W. Reps providing a background on the artistic process and on urban development in the nineteenth century.

About this title

About the Author:

John W. Reps is professor emeritus of city and regional planning at Cornell University. He is a renowned authority on the history of American urban planning and has written numerous books on the topic, including The Making of Urban America, Cities of the A

Review:

"The preservation of American architecture owes a lasting debt to John W. Reps. His work has kept our attention focused on architecture's main purpose, which is the building and sustaining of the city as a whole. Beginning with 'The Making of Urban America' in 1965 and developing his theme in a series of later books, Reps has continued to show us what the American city looked like before it was torn apart and to describe how it got to be that way." -- Preservation

The 115 panoramic bird's eye lithographs in this volume span the continent from Halifax and Montreal to Yerba Buena and Los Angeles. For the innumerable readers who have reason to care how such cities as Davenport, Iowa, or Lexington, Ky., or Hannibal, Mo., or Phoenix in the Arizona Territory looked in their formative years, this book will be a delight. For historians and others interested in how American cities developed, these illustrations, with their clusters of courthouses, banks, hospitals, churches, schools, general stores, theaters and railroad depots forming a central core and their as-yet undeveloped streets laid out in grids and planted with elms awaiting the future, will be an essential reference. Congratulations to Mr. Reps and his publisher for making this fine volume available. I hope they are planning a sequel. -- Los Angeles Times

The 115 panoramic bird's-eye lithographs in this volume span the continent from Halifax and Montreal to Yerba Buena and Los Angeles. For the innumerable readers who have reason to care how such cities as Davenport, lowa, Lexington, Ky., or Hannibal, Mo., or Phoenix in the Arizona Territory looked in the formative years, this book will be a delight. For historians and others interested in how American cities developed, these illustrations, with their clusters of courthouse banks, hospitals, churches, schools, general stores, theaters and railroad depots forming a central core and their as-yet undeveloped streets laid out in grids and planted wit elms awaiting the future, will be an essential reference. Congratulations to Mr. Reps and his publisher for making this fine volume available. I hope they are planning a sequel." -- LA Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1568981465
• ISBN 13: 9781568981468
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 116