1998 "BIRD'S EYE VIEWS" - HISTORIC LITHOGRAPHS OF NORTH AMERICA By John W. Reps

Faultless in every respect. Clean and sharp all around! This magnificent "coffee table" size edition shows many views of cities from the 19th century - examples being Chicago before the Great "O'leary" Fire and San Francisco as it was before the 1906 Earthquake.

Sample pages shown are St. Louis from 1896, Seattle, and New York City.

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.