Early prints and maps of Philadelphia & Denver

For almost three decades I sold prints and maps in Philadelphia, and now for about half a year I have done the same in Denver. Any reader of this blog knows that my particular interest with this material lies in its historical nature and I have been lucky in that the histories of both places I have worked have been well represented in prints and maps.

Of course, the history of Philadelphia is over twice as long as that of Denver, but from its early days as a wintering ground for Native Americans, then as the focus of Pike’s Peak Gold Rush, through to its development as one of the most vibrant cities in the country, Denver has a history that is both complex and fascinating.

History is everywhere in Philadelphia, with centuries old buildings and historic sites of national import scattered thick on the ground. There are also some of the most important American institutions with an historical bent located in Philadelphia, such as the Library Company and Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The history of Denver is far less obvious, but it is still there for those with an interest, and in the Historical Society of Colorado and the Denver Public Library’s Western Collection, Denver holds its own with institutions of historical import.

In my time here, I have found that while the specifics of their stories are very different indeed, Philadelphia and Denver are similar in that both of their histories are rich and are an important part of the fabric of the cities. (This is, of course, a good thing as we have opened a shop in Denver!) One thing I have noticed, however, is that the two populations have a very different approach to the views and maps of their locations.

In my opinion, Philadelphia has the most interesting and important body of antique views of any American city. From the earliest printed views in the mid-eighteenth century, leading to William Birch’s landmark City of Philadelphia, through the wonderful series of views by Cephas Childs and J.C. Wild, continuing past the commercial lithographs of post-Civil War period to an extensive body of images of the Centennial, the views of Philadelphia are rightly known as comprising a unique and important body of American iconography.

Philadelphians are quite aware of this fabulous graphic wealth. There are great repositories of Philadelphia views at its many cultural institutions, exhibits on the topic are regularly on display, and there is an impressive body of reference works on Philadelphia views, from Martin Snyder’s City of Independence to the forthcoming Philadelphia on Stone from the Library Company. Furthermore, there is a strong group of knowledgeable collectors and scholars with an interest in this topic.

Somewhat in contrast, while there is a significant body of early maps of Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania, there is not nearly the interest in regional maps as there is in views. There are certainly less collectors of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania maps than there are of views of the same area and there have been few exhibitions and no significant reference books on the subject. Sure there are great maps and some serious collectors, but these pale in comparison to the comparable print collections and collectors.

I think there are a number of reasons for this. In terms of Philadelphia maps, there are far fewer early maps of note than there are important early views. Also, most of the early maps of Philadelphia show only Center City, making them of less interest to the large population that lives outside this small locale. And, as I have written about elsewhere, maps of Pennsylvania are notoriously unloved.

What has struck me since my move, is that the attitude of locals here towards views and maps of Denver and Colorado is almost the inverse of that of those in the Delaware Valley toward views and maps of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Here, it is maps which generate the most enthusiasm, with views surprisingly under-appreciated.

There is an notably large contingent in the Denver area who are quite keen on maps of the region. The Rocky Mountain Map Society is one of the most active in the country, with many of its members impressively knowledgeable on various western map related topics. And this applies to those who wander into our shop; whereas in Philadelphia we are often answering queries about views, here it is usually maps and more maps!

Probably a lot of this is explained by the fact that the cartographic history of Colorado and Rocky Mountains is really more interesting and varied than that of eastern Pennsylvania. Until the early nineteenth century, there was essentially little or nothing shown on maps of this region, but then a number of expeditions were sent out to the West, leading to the gradual mapping of Colorado and the Rockies. The post-Civil War railroad surveys and other expeditions slowly filled in the topography of the area, so the maps from different years showed interesting progress. And the political development of the trans-Mississippi West went through a whole series of configurations from 1848 to the end of the century, each new map again providing an interesting contrast to those before.

Thus the interest in maps out here is no surprise. As I wrote in an earlier blog, I am having a wonderful time learning about the exploration and settlement of the region, studying how it is depicted on the hundreds of different maps in the second half of the nineteenth century. What did surprise me, on the other hand, is how little interest or knowledge there is about the early printed views of Denver and Colorado.

As I said, in Philadelphia there is an immense amount of interest in and knowledge of the printed views of the area, whereas in Denver there seems to be relatively little of either. Now I do have to admit that this does not seem to apply to the photography of the West, which is a fascinating subject about which I know rather little. But when you are talking about engravings or lithographs of Denver and Colorado, it just doesn’t seem to be something about which people out here are particularly excited.

That isn’t to say that there isn’t some interest in some views of the area. A.E. Mathews’ Pencil Sketches of Colorado are well known and desirable, and many of the map collectors in the area love bird’s eye views, but I find surprising apathy with reference to the more mundane, but still wonderful views of the area from the 1860s to 1900.

Just to give one example, I have talked to a lot of people out here and have yet to find anyone who knows what the first printed view of Denver is. I find that pretty amazing. Denver was only founded in 1858 and there are only so many prints done of the place before, say, 1870, so I would have thought people would know about this, and care!

Some of the lack of interest may be that there are not that many early views of Denver and Colorado, and other than Mathew’s set, most of those are wood engravings from illustrated newspapers. As I have written earlier in this blog, I think illustrated newspaper prints are historically and visually wonderful graphic images and so to me these early views of Denver are terrific, but I guess they haven’t really inspired enthusiasm in the general public.

I am hoping to change that by putting together as much of a history on the topic as possible. There is a recently published book, Illustrations of Historic Colorado, which does include an interesting collection of printed images of the state (most from illustrated newspapers), but I think this topic needs to be further explored and publicized. I plan to do some of this in this blog, but eventually I hope to get something more substantial published. And, by the way, I think I know what the first printed view of Denver is, a topic I will discuss in a forthcoming blog…

Map Fair & Map Museum

While most of the US is suffering under cold & snowy weather, things look pretty nice down in Miami. This weekend there is a great reason to visit besides the great weather, the 2011 Miami Map Fair. Run by and held in the Historical Museum of South Florida, this is the preeminent map event of the year. 50 exhibitors are showing their wares on Saturday and Sunday, including many of the top map dealers in the world.

For the last four years I have been representing The Philadelphia Print Shop at the fair, but this year my partner, Donald H. Cresswell, will be attending instead. I envy him, for not only is the largest collection of available antique maps on display, but many of our friends in the business are either exhibiting or visiting. If you like antique maps, this is definitely the place to be (and don't forget your suntan lotion!).

One of the people who offen attends the map fair will be David J. Morgan, who just over a year ago opened a new non-profit museum, the CARTE Museum. Located at 2347 Christian Street in Baton Rouge, this museum was developed to make available to the public Dave's amazing collection for both research and exhibition. "Carte" is, of course, the French word for map, but Dave uses it also as an acronym for Cartographic Acquisition, Research, Teaching and Exhibition museum.

Dave's collection has been built over the past 40 years and its focus is on the Gulf Coast, though it is also strong in maps showing the political development of the United States. The collection includes complete atlases, books with cartographic content, and maps from atlases and separately issued. So far two exhibitions have been mounted, one of the discovery of the Mississippi River from 1513 to 1764, and the other on West Florida. Next week, the museum is opening a new exhibition "Mapping the Mississippi River and Its Tributaries," which covers the period from about 1750 to 1820. Dave is also planning a "jam-up Louisiana Statehood bicentennial exhibit" with an opening reception on April 30, 2012.

The museum is open to the public on Wednesdays from 9 to 5 or by appointment. Inquiries can be addressed to info@cartemuseum.org.

Visions West exhibition

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the Louisiana Purchase, through the rest of the century, Americans have been fascinated by the trans-Mississippi West. This fascination created a ready market for images of the American frontier, a market that was served by a plethora of artists and printmakers.

I have always been interested in depictions of the American West by those who were early travelers there, an interest which has become particularly keen with my move to Denver. I have begun to delve past those prints which I have studied for years, by artists such as George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Moran, and learn more about the many other artists who traveled to the West on private and government explorations. Thus it was that I was especially pleased to hear of a new exhibition opening up just a few miles from our shop in Denver on the subject of images of the frontier West.

The exhibit is entitled "Visions West: 19th Century Expedition Artists," and it is running from now until April 3rd at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. I was able to attend the opening a couple of weeks ago and I was surprised and absolutely delighted at what a tremendous exhibit it is.

The theme of the exhibit is nineteenth century printed images of the American West done by on-the-spot artists. The prints in the exhibit are from the collection of Graham Curtis (about whose collection I will be writing a blog in the near future), which were generously loaned to the Arvada Center by Graham and Barbara Curtis with the help of their daughter Kay Hunsaker. The quality, variety and scope of the prints in the exhibit are amazing, making this an exhibition which anyone interested in the topic has to try to come and view.

The big names--Catlin, Bodmer, Bierstadt, Audubon, Moran--are all there, but the real strength in the exhibit are all the less well known, but equally important artists who documented the West between 1822 and 1883. Some of these artists, such as Seth Eastman, Peter Rindisbacher, and A.E. Mathews, were not part of Government expeditions, but most of the artists whose prints are on display were part of various explorations sent out by the Federal government. These include images by artists such as James W. Abert, John Mix Stanley, Samuel Seymour, John J. Young, Arthur Schott and many more whose accurate, first-hand images provide us with a window on the American West while it was still a "wild frontier."

The exhibition in Arvada is very nicely presented. The prints are arranged by artist, rather than date, and this allows one to look at some of these familiar prints from a new perspective, focusing on the artists, not so much the expeditions. The staff has written informative text on each artist and his work, and so the exhibit is a feast for the mind as well as the eye. All involved should be proud of this wonderful exhibit and again I encourage anyone who can to stop by to see the exhibit before it closes on April 3rd.

On April 12, 1861, the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, beginning the American Civil War, a conflagration which raged for almost exactly four years before, on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The Civil War, as much as the American Revolution, was a defining event in American history, and this conflict has always figured large in the awareness of the American public.

The 150th anniversary of the Civil War will generate renewed interest in the war, with many events, texts, and other media pouring forth this year. As I am particularly interested in historical prints, I have always been a student of contemporary prints of the Civil War. Thus, I have decided to jump on the bandwagon and produce a section of our web site which will specifically consider how the war was pictured in contemporary printed images. This section of our site is called A Nation Divided.

The Civil War took place at a time when two significant historical trends combined to make the relevance of prints particularly important. First was the development, in the nineteenth century, of a growing percentage of the American population which both was literate and had an interest in and the wealth to afford books, magazines, newspapers, and prints for the home. The other trend was the development of printmaking processes that allowed for the relatively inexpensive production of large numbers of printed pictures and maps.

So, a century and a half ago, as the United States made its inevitable way towards the cataclysm which would tear the nation apart, these important historical trends made it so that printed images would become one of, if not the most important means by which the general public would follow the war. Thousands of portraits of political and military leaders, patriotic and partisan images, and scenes of the events and places of the war were printed and disseminated around the country (mostly in the North), providing many Americans with much of their understanding of what was going on in the war. These printed images provided one of the main threads in the fabric of Americans' lives from 1861 to 1865.

Thus it is that I believe the study of contemporary printed images of the Civil War is crucial to gain insight into that traumatic event in our nation's history. Not only do these pictures show us today what those people, places and events looked like (although not by any means always accurately), but also it is only through an awareness of these prints that we can gain any true understanding as to how Americans of the time saw the war.

An important part of the intent of this section of our web site is that it be a useful reference source for those interested in the topic, exploring the history, nature and impact of contemporary printed images of the Civil War. We will put up pages on general topics, such as portraits, cartoons, etc., but a main part of the web site will be a monthly account of the events of the war 150 years ago, with a consideration of the prints showing those events.

This web site is also, of course, intended as a sales tool for our shop. Thus we will include images and descriptions of prints and maps we have in our inventory, along with images which are important to the topic at hand, even if we do not have them for sale.

I welcome comments and corrections. As an historian and printseller, there are few subjects as important to my work and the shop as the prints of the Civil War. I would love to spread knowledge of and interest in this fascinating subject.

An Education: a stolen Speed map

I recently watched the 2009 movie, An Eduction, which takes place in and around London in 1961 and is about a 16 year old girl, Jenny Mellor, who meets a man, David Goldman, almost twice her age, with whom she has an affair that ends unhappily. I thought the movie was terrific, but I was definitely surprised to see that a seventeenth-century map by John Speed played a cameo role.

While David is an appealing fellow, charming everyone in Jenny's family, he soon turns out to be something of a rogue. This all seems fairly harmless, and indeed is part of David's charm, until the inevitable truth come out that David is married, has a child, and has had similar affairs with other young woman in the past. I was going along with this plot line quite happily until about mid-way through the film when one particular scene put me right off David and his roguishness.

In this scene, Jenny, David, his friend Danny, and Danny's girl friend Helen are driving around the British country-side when they see a house-for-sale sign. Unexpectedly, David pulls over and he and Danny march off to view the house, sternly insisting that Jenny not join them. This mysterious attitude is soon explained when David and Danny stroll out of the house with a framed map in their possession, quickly piling into the car and driving off.

It is clear that the map was stolen from the owner of the house. Jenny is upset by this episode, to which David replies:

"It's an old map. A Speed. Poor dear didn't even know what it was. It's a waste. It shouldn't spend its life on a wall in...wherever the hell we were. It should be with us. We know how to look after it properly. We liberated it."

Well, right there I was totally put off David, though Jenny decided this wasn't so bad, thus continuing on her fateful path towards her deeper disappointment in the end.

Now, my wife tells me I am a prude about movies. Unethical behavior (criminal or sexual) is the foundation of many good movies, but I must say that I do not like it when the movie implies this behavior is just fine or at least can be "winked" at. And to steal a map! That really got my goat. I knew that if David was stealing old maps, he was definitely not a person that Jenny should hitch her wagon to! Quite honestly, if it had all turned out well in the end, I think I would not have liked the movie half so much as I did (I think my wife is probably right....)

So what was it that they stole? A map by John Speed (1552-1629). Speed is probably best known for his Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, first issued in 1611 and then several times again over the next few decades. Speed spent over 15 years assembling the information for this atlas, which contains maps of the entire British Isles, the individual nations, and separate maps for the counties. In 1627, Speed produced his A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World, which included maps of the rest of the world.

In many ways, it was Speed's maps which spurred the development of map collecting in the 20th century. Speed's maps are very attractive, with many decorative features such as coats-of-arms, city plans, vignettes of battles, and images of costumed figures. Dealers discovered that if these maps were colored (and almost all were issued uncolored), they would be decorative enough to appeal to the general public and so these became the bread & butter stock for many British dealers. I think that the Speed maps gave dealers enough business to encourage the trade and also brought in enough new buyers that this really was the genesis of modern map-collecting.

Be that as it may, Speed maps became very popular in the 1950s and 60s, and so they remain to this day. His maps are quite expensive, ranging from the mid-hundreds to over $20,000 for his world map. So, it is not surprising that David, who obviously did not have a robust ethical sense, might want to steal one when he saw the opportunity.

One of the interesting things about An Education is that it is based on a real-life memoir of the same title by Lynn Barber, a newspaper writer and interviewer. It turns out the theft of a Speed map was an actual event in her relationship with her older lover.

One weekend I was moaning - I was always moaning - "I'm bored with Bateman Street", so we drove out towards Newmarket. At a place called Six Mile Bottom, I saw a thatched cottage with a For Sale sign outside. "Look, how pretty," I said. "'Why can't you buy nice places like that, instead of horrible old slums?" "Perhaps we can," said Simon, so we bounced up to the cottage and an old lady showed us round. I was bored within minutes, but Simon seemed unconscionably interested in the bedroom corridor which he kept revisiting. Then I saw him going out to the car, carrying something.

Eventually we left and went for lunch at a hotel in Newmarket. We were having a rather lugubrious meal when two men came into the dining room and one pointed the other towards our table. The man introduced himself as a detective. He said: "We've had a complaint from a Mrs so and so of Six Mile Bottom. She says a couple visited her cottage this morning and afterwards she noticed that a valuable antique map by Speed was missing from one of the bedrooms." "Oh, Simon!" I said. He shot me a look. "Perhaps we could have this conversation outside," he suggested. He went outside with the policeman. I waited a few minutes and then went to the Ladies, and out the back door and away down the street. I had just enough money for a train back to London. I hoped Simon would go to prison.

He didn't of course; he bounced round to Clifden Road a few days later and took me out to dinner. "How could you steal from an old lady?" "I didn't steal. She asked me to have the map valued." "No she didn't - I was with you." "All right, she didn't ask me. But I recognised that the map was by Speed and I thought if I got it valued for her, it would be a nice surprise."

I knew he was lying, but I let it go. I said: "If you ever really stole something, I would leave you." He said: "I know you would, Minn." But actually I knew he had stolen something and I didn't leave him, so we were both lying.

Unfortunately, I couldn't tell from the very quick view of the map in the movie what the map was of, and of course the original memoir doesn't say what Speed map it was. So what would this "valuable" map have been worth in 1961? My only sources for this are the early 1960s issues of Ken Nebenzahl's catalogues, which do list a number of Speed maps. Most of the country maps were listed for about $20 to $35 (today these are in the low four figures), while the better American regional maps were $125 to $150 (today these sell in the middle thousands). Based on this, I would think the world map might have been as much as $200-$250.

So what does this mean in today's dollars? It means that if they had a comparable price today, the country maps would be sold for between about $150 and $250, the regional American maps $900 and $1,100, and the world map maybe $1,500 to $1,800. Makes you wish you could go back and stock up on these maps! I would be interested to know what map it was that Lynn's lover stole, but in any case, this story--both in the movie and the memoir--is an interesting one and it does show the notoriety of the maps of John Speed even half a century ago.

Denver Public Library

Last week I attended a breakfast meeting at the Denver Public Library about their new Creating Communities project. This is a terrific program which is designed to make the historical resources of the library, as well as those from other affiliated institutions, accessible to the general public through the Creating Communities web site. As a die-hard believer in the use of historical material to promote knowledge and understanding of our past, and so also of our present, I was delighted to find out about this program.

First a word about the Denver Public Library. Until this summer, I lived for the last three decades in Philadelphia, which has one of the oldest and best public library systems in the country, so I was very pleased to find that the Denver library system is also absolutely first rate. The library was established in 1889, the city librarian calling it a “center of public happiness.” In 1910, a new Central Library building was constructed, and then over the next decade eight branch libraries were built, all with the generous help of Andrew Carnegie. As the library system matured, new branches were opened, old ones refurbished, and in 1995 an outstanding new Central Library was built, designed by Michael Graves.

I am a fan not only of libraries, but also of institutions which hold collections of prints & maps. It turns out that in Denver the public library is the institution in this area with the best collection of historic printed images, a collection held in the Western History and Genealogy department. Their collection of Western Americana is, without question, one of the best in the country.

Opened in 1935, the Western collection was initially intended to focus on books by Colorado authors, but soon the department broadened its focus to encompasses all phases of the development of the trans-Mississippi West. To quote the library web site, “[t]he collection continues to grow and presently includes 200,000 cataloged books, pamphlets, atlases, maps, and microfilm titles. In addition, it offers 600,000 photographs, 3,700 manuscript archives, and a remarkable collection of Western fine art and prints to researchers across the world.”

Among the collections in which the library is particularly strong are publications of Western railroads, reports and maps of Colorado mining companies, trade catalogs, records and printed memorabilia of Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows, frontier theater programs, land grant materials, Colorado territorial imprints, architectural drawings, and extensive clipping files of local newspapers. The maps and atlases, of which there are about 6,000, and the historical views are, of course, of particular interest to me. The Western Collection is a place I plan to spend much time researching.

As with any library, one of the main goals of the Denver Public Library is to reach out to the community, both to provide it with access to its resources, but also to stimulate curiosity and increase knowledge. That is what Creating Communities does. Other local institutions are also involved in the project, including the City of Denver, History Colorado, the Auraria Library, the University of Colorado at Denver, and the University of Denver Penrose Library. This program makes available on the web many of the resources about Denver and its history from these institutions. One of the main parts of the web site is a section with information on seven of Denver’s historic neighborhoods, and many of the Western Collection’s archival materials, in digital form, are also available through the site, including property maps of the city.

An interesting part of the program is “myDenver”, which is designed to allow the general public to upload photographs and stories of their own, and to be part of an ongoing conversation about their city. The further development of myDenver is one of the main goals of the Creating Communities program going forward.

I was rather spoiled by the extensive institutional riches of Philadelphia and I was a bit concerned in moving to “the West,” that I would be bereft of this important type of resource. I was, as I should have known, mistaken in this, for Denver not only has its own rich history (though not as long a one as Philadelphia) but also its own wealth of historical material which available to me and to anyone else with an interest in the history of this wonderful city.

Peter Marzio

I just learned of the passing, on December 9, of one of the superstars of the print world, Peter C. Marzio. Peter was the director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, a post he held for almost three decades, and he was instrumental in helping build the museum into a world-class cultural center. He died last Thursday from cancer at age 67, much too soon.

Peter's was something of a rags to riches story. He was born into a working-class immigrant family, becoming the first in his family to graduate from High School. At Juniata College he became inspired by the art and museum world, deciding to make this his career. He went on to earn a doctorate in art and American history from the University of Chicago. He served as curator of prints and drawings at the Smithsonian and then as director and chief executive officer of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, before becoming the director in Houston.

Peter is best known to the general public for his art scholarship, educational programs and for his dynamic leadership of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. However, for those in the print world, Peter is "the man" when it came to chromolithography. As I have mentioned many times in this blog, I think chromolithographs of the nineteenth century are among the most interesting and over-looked American prints and it was Peter's work which turned me on to these wonderful prints.

In 1979, while director at the Corcoran, Peter Marzio wrote his superb book on American chromolithographs, The Democratic Art. Pictures for a 19th-Century America, , as well as curated an exhibition on the subject at the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art. This was the first time that a serious work on American 19th-century chromolithographs was published and that a major exhibit on the subject was put on.

The books is tremendous and when I first read it, it opened my eyes as to the fascination and importance of these hitherto overlooked prints. Peter wrote in his preface that "My deepest wish is that this book will help students to see the field of American lithography as worth of research." It certainly has done that, and while Peter contributed a huge amount else to the art world, if this was all he had done, his name would still be one revered among those with an interest in American prints. The world is a poorer place now than before his death, but much richer for his having been in it.