Travel to Cities and Towns of the Americas’ Past in Exhibition of Prints at The New York Public Library

Cities in the Americas Opens February 13

View of Boston
View of Boston, by F. Fuchs. Chromolithograph, published by John Weik, 1870.

New York, NY, January 16, 2004 -- Imagine flying over Boston in 1870, walking through bucolic lower Manhattan in 1643, or viewing the New Orleans skyline from the banks of the Mississippi River in 1841. Cities in the Americas: A Celebration of The Phelps Stokes Collection, an exhibition of prints at The New York Public Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, provides a look at bygone views from the 16th through 19th centuries of nearly 60 cities in North, Central, and South America. It will be on view from February 13 through May 28, 2004 in the Library’s third-floor Print and Stokes Galleries. Admission is free.

Etchings, engravings and lithographs depicting locales from Portland, Maine to Lima, Peru, provide a rare perspective on the evolution of American cities during the first four centuries of settlement in the New World, and on changes in living patterns that occurred as Americans were drawn from rural settings to newly popular urban centers. The prints on view also document the development of the printmaking industry in the United States, which came into its own in the nineteenth century. The exhibition, curated by Elizabeth Wyckoff and Nicole Simpson of the Library’s Print Collection, draws from materials assembled by Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, who donated his comprehensive collection of American historical maps, prints, and drawings to The New York Public Library in 1930.

Cities in the Americas opens with four items that provide an overview of the collection and many of the cities represented. Included are a 1618 map of North and South America with views of individual cities and native peoples around the border; an 1817 composite view of Baltimore, Boston, Charleston, New York, Philadelphia, and Richmond, Virginia; a detailed map of Manhattan with parts of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Jersey from 1821; and a ca. 1656 map of North American settlements along the East Coast that remained a model for maps of the area for the next century.

Bay near Bedlows Island, NY
New-York Taken from the Bay Near Bedlows Island, by William Jamess Bennett after John Gadsby Chapman. Color aquatint with hand coloring; published by Henry Megarey, 1836.
The first half of the exhibition features sections focusing on Manhattan Island, Washington, D. C., Philadelphia, and Boston. Among the intriguing views of Manhattan are Novum Amsterodamum, an anonymous pen and ink and wash drawing, ca. 1642-43, showing an isolated, rural settlement featuring a large church surrounded by small buildings, windmills, and fields. Also shown is a 1767 plan of New York, drafted in secret at the request of the commander in chief of the British forces during the height of the Stamp Act riots. The rapid development of the City northward on the island is revealed in Panorama of New York and Vicinity, a striking aerial view of Manhattan, published 1866, showing the city, including its many buildings, parks, and other landmarks. In the foreground is a baseball game at Elysian Fields in New Jersey. These “bird’s-eye views” of American cities soared in popularity after the Civil War, becoming “almost a mania,” according to Stokes, and the exhibition features several of the dramatic, partially imaginary depictions, which are one of the hallmarks of the growing North American printmaking industry.

Washington, D. C., was selected as the United States capital in 1790 and Pierre-Charles L’Enfant, a French engineer, was chosen to design the layout of the city. The exhibition includes a print of the original plan of the District, published in 1792, and a hand-colored lithograph from 1849 showing a broad vista from the elevated position of the portico of the Capitol. Surrounding the view from the Capitol are twenty vignettes that depict various Washington landmarks including the projected Smithsonian Institution, which had only recently begun construction, and an image of the Washington Monument with its planned, although never constructed, pantheon base.

One of the most spectacular items on display is a 1754 panorama of Philadelphia. More than six feet in length, the print shows a wide view of the city from across the Delaware River. Another striking image, a colored etching and aquatint published in 1801, shows Philadelphia stretching out beyond the tree under which William Penn made his treaty with the native peoples at the time of the establishment of Pennsylvania. The setting became a symbol of the city’s founding and was featured in a number of prints issued at the time.

Boston was settled by Puritans in 1630 on the Shawmut Peninsula, which was connected to the mainland by only a thin strip of ground. Its area was greatly increased in the nineteenth century when parts of the Back Bay were filled. The distinct shape of the peninsula can be seen clearly in A Plan of Boston in New England with its Environs, an etching and aquatint drafted by Henry Pelham for use by British Intelligence. The map was shipped to London, where it was etched by Francis Jukes. A bird’s eye view of Boston by F. Fuchs, published in 1870, shows the widened connection to the mainland, as well as the growing metropolis and crowded harbor.

Although the core of The Phelps Stokes collection comprises often rare 16th-and 17th-century views of the New World’s first cities, Stokes also realized the value of gathering a comprehensive collection of images of cities across the United States, supplemented by key views of Canada, South America, and the West Indies. The second half of the exhibition documents the expansion of the United States from the East to places like Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Salt Lake City. For example, a particularly vivid aerial view of Oklahoma City, ca. 1890, shows a meticulous grid of city blocks lined with homes, businesses, and other establishments. The distinct borders of the town stand out sharply against the open plains that surround it on all sides. A lithograph of Virginia City, Nevada, shows the town in 1861, just two years after gold was discovered in the state and Virginia City became a headquarters of mining activity. The print is inscribed with the handwriting of Smythe Clark, who sent it home as a souvenir for his sister with a note and an indication marking the house where he boarded. This print, like many others, features a border with close-up drawings of the facades of thirty local businesses. Other cities and towns featured in the exhibition include Savannah, Georgia; Utica, New York; Salem, Massachusetts; St. Louis, Missouri; Keokuck, Iowa; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Salt Lake City, Utah.
Panorama of New York and vicinity. Julius Bien after John Bachmann. Chromolithograph. Published by John Bachmann, 1866.

I. N. Phelps Stokes
I. N. Phelps Stokes (1867–1944) was a prominent New Yorker, a Trustee of The New York Public Library, and a member of the Art Commission of the City of New York. He combined his family’s deeply rooted social conscience with a love of architecture, art, and history. After studying architecture at Columbia University and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, his first New York commission, with partner William Dean Howells, was to build the University Settlement House on the Lower East Side, the beginning of a lifelong dedication to low-income housing. Over twenty years of his life were consumed with the publication of The Iconography of Manhattan Island, an invaluable six-volume compilation of images and documents relating to New York City’s history, compiled from works in his own collection and from numerous other private and public collections. The Phelps Stokes Collection of American Historical Prints visually documents a 400-year sweep of American history, beginning with the European discovery of the Americas and tracing the transformation of the landscape into an urbanized United States at the end of the nineteenth century. This collection of more than 800 prints and drawings consists primarily of town views and historical scenes, as well as some maps.

The Print Collection
The Phelps Stokes Collection is part of the Print Collection in The New York Public Library’s Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. The Print Collection encompasses 15,000 volumes on the history of prints and printmakers; artist clipping files; and a collection of close to 200,000 original prints, ranging from woodcuts, engravings, etchings, lithographs, and screenprints to digital prints, covering the history of the art in the West from the 15th century to the present, and Japanese prints from the 10th century to the present. The collection also includes illustrated books, artists’ books, and a small collection of drawings. Among the collection’s strengths are its holdings of 19th- and 20th-century American prints, with a particular focus on New York artists, and 18th- and 19th-century Japanese color woodcuts.

Online exhibition

Cities in the Americas: A Celebration of The Phelps Stokes Collection, is on view February 13 through May 28, 2004 at The New York Public Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library in the Print and Stokes Galleries on the third floor. Exhibition hours are Tuesday and Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Sundays, Mondays, and national holidays. Admission is free. For more information about exhibitions at The New York Public Library, the public may call 212-869-8089 or visit the Library’s website at www.nypl.org.

This exhibition is made possible through the continuing generosity of Miriam and Ira D. Wallach.

Press contact: Herb Scher or Tina Hoerenz, 212-221-7676.

 

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