Snapshots of the Past

Early Photographic View of Washington, D.C. from the Capitol Looking West-Southwest [c. 1863] – Historic Photograph Print

Early Photographic View of Washington, D.C. from the Capitol Looking West-Southwest [c. 1863], 1863 — historic photograph
Early Photographic View of Washington, D.C. from the Capitol Looking West-Southwest [c. 1863], 1863. Historic photograph from the U.S. Capitol collection.

(Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

Few images capture their era like this historic photograph of Early Photographic View of Washington, D.C. from the Capitol Looking West-Southwest [c. 1863]. It is part of the Snapshots of the Past archive, gathered over 25 years of research.

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Early Photographic View of Washington, D.C. from the Capitol Looking West-Southwest [c. 1863]

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A view taken from the Capitol dome looking west-southwest captures Washington before the city had its later grand avenues and monuments. In 1863 the capital was a city at war: Union troops were camped across the region, and the unfinished Capitol, with its cast-iron dome still under construction, stood above a landscape of open ground, scattered buildings and the Potomac beyond. Albumen prints like this one were the standard way such views reached the public in the Civil War years, and they remain valuable for showing how sparse the District still was at mid-century.

Created / published1863
Mediumphotographic print, albumen
Original scan3,609 × 2,292 px · prints to 12 × 8 in at 300 dpi
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-HPA-203517

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Snapshots of the Past helps heritage brands, museums, historians and storytellers tell stories with history: historic prints, image licensing and historical storytelling drawn from more than 25 years of research and curation.

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