Pontiac, Illinois, 1869 – Vintage Map Wall Art
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
This rare antique map captures Pontiac, Illinois, 1869 in remarkable detail. Sourced directly from the Library of Congress, it represents an authentic piece of documented history.
Library of Congress record: Bird's eye view of the city of Pontiac, Livingston County, Illinois 1869
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Pontiac, Illinois, 1869
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Pontiac, the county seat of Livingston County in north central Illinois, sat on the Vermilion River in 1869 and depended mainly on the prairie farms around it. The Illinois Central Railroad had reached the town in the 1850s, giving farmers a way to ship corn, oats, wheat and livestock to Chicago and beyond, and grain warehouses and lumber yards clustered along the tracks. Courthouse business, merchants on the square, and shops serving farm families shaped daily life, and men who had served in the recent Civil War would have been familiar faces on its streets. This bird's-eye view records a town still closely tied to the land and to the rail line that carried its produce away.
| Created / published | 1869 |
|---|---|
| Creator | ruger, a., merchant's lithographing company |
| Notes | An original bird's-eye view map of Pontiac, Illinois, drawn in 1869. Bird's-eye view maps were drawn by travelling artists who walked a town street by street, sketching every building from an imagined vantage point in the air, then sold the finished lithograph door to door by subscription. Roughly five thousand American towns were recorded this way between the 1860s and the 1920s, and for many of them the panoramic map is the most complete picture of the place that survives. Reproduced from the original in the Library of Congress collections. Printed to order on archival paper. Free shipping on all US orders. |
| Subjects | Panoramic maps--Illinois |
| Source | Library of Congress, Panoramic Maps |
| Original scan | 7,152 × 5,680 px · prints to 24 × 19 in at 300 dpi |
| Library of Congress title | Bird's eye view of the city of Pontiac, Livingston County, Illinois 1869 |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-OYK-488600 |
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