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New York City. BACHMANN, J./ KIMMEL & FORSTER [New York, 1865] Birds Eye View Of New York And Environs. 12 ¼ x 18 inches. Hand colored lithograph; excellent condition. Very scarce, delicately executed and colored bird’s-eye view of New York City as it was at the end of the Civil War. The war is referenced by an armored war ship at lower right. Also, two warships can be seen in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in Wallabout Basin, near which, in Greenpoint, the Monitor was fitted out with its armor plating. The city would embark on a period of dramatic growth after the war, which is suggested by the volume and diversity of shipping depicted throughout the area. Hellgate and the Long Island Sound are also represented in the far distance along with a largely, still undeveloped landscape. The period from after the Civil War to about 1910 was the heyday of bird’s-eye views of American towns and cities. Historians estimate that some 4,500 were produced nationwide during this period. In an era before aviation, the creation of these panoramas was an act of imagination, combining information from city maps and ground-level sketches of buildings, while employing the rules of Renaissance perspective to compose convincing aerial views. Some of these were commissioned to promote settlement and the development of towns, especially in the expanding westward areas of the country, but they were also purchased by residents as emblems of civic pride. John Bachmann, a German immigrant to the United States, was an artist and lithographer, who is credited with coining the term bird's-eye view and was a prolific and prominent creator of such views. His first such panoramas were of Civil War battle areas published in 1861. Bachmann produced a variety of bird’s-eye views of New York City from different vantage points, including a larger panorama published by Herman Bencke. Christopher Kimmel and Thomas Forster, the publishers of the present view, were in business from 1865 to 1871. Reps 2693; not in Eno.
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