The panoramic
map was a popular cartographic form used to depict U.S. and Canadian
cities and towns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries (1847 to 1929.) Known also as bird's-eye views, perspective
maps, and aero views, panoramic maps are nonphotographic representations
of cities portrayed as if viewed from above at an oblique angle.
Although not generally drawn to scale, they show street patterns,
individual buildings, and major landscape features in perspective.
Panoramic
maps graphically depict the vibrant life of a city. Harbors are
shown choked with ships, often to the extent of constituting hazards
to navigation. Trains speed along railroad tracks, at times on
the same roadbed with locomotives and cars headed in the opposite
direction. People and horsedrawn carriages fill the streets, and
smoke belches from the stacks of industrial plants. Urban and
industrial development in post-Civil War America is vividly portrayed
in the maps.
Victorian
America's panoramic maps are quite remarkable in the perspective
of the cities they capture. Most panoramic maps were published
independently, not as plates in an atlas or in a descriptive geographical
book. Preparation and sale of nineteenth-century panoramas were
motivated by civic pride and the desire of the city fathers to
encourage commercial growth. Many views were prepared for and
endorsed by chambers of commerce and other civic organizations
and were used as advertisements of a city's commercial and residential
potential. These maps reveal much about the great contrasts and
contradictions of the industrial age and the progressive era.
Preparation
of panoramic maps involved a vast amount of painstakingly detailed
labor. For each project a frame or projection was developed, showing
in perspective the pattern of streets. The artist then walked
in the street, sketching buildings, trees, and other features
to present a complete and accurate landscape as though seen from
an elevation of 2,000 to 3,000 feet.
Panoramic
maps graphically depict the vibrant life of a city. Harbors are
shown choked with ships, often to the extent of constituting hazards
to navigation. Trains speed along railroad tracks, at times on
the same roadbed with locomotives and cars headed in the opposite
direction. People and horsedrawn carriages fill the streets, and
smoke belches from the stacks of industrial plants. Urban and
industrial development in post-Civil War America is vividly portrayed
in the maps.
Here
is a complete list of the city maps included in this collection.
Where you see a city listed several times, there are several different
maps - either maps created in different years and/or by different
map making companies.
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