Memphis, Tennessee, 1870 – Antique Map Print
(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
Memphis, Tennessee, 1870 comes to life in this antique map, reproduced from the original with every detail intact. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.
Library of Congress record: Bird's eye view of the city of Memphis, Tennessee 1870
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Memphis, Tennessee, 1870
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Memphis in 1870 was a Mississippi River cotton port of about 40,000 people, still working through the upheaval of the Civil War and emancipation, which had reshaped its labor force and its streets. Cotton moved through its warehouses and compresses to the riverfront, and rail lines running east and south tied the city to the plantation country and to markets beyond. Politics remained raw during Reconstruction, and the 1866 riot, which killed dozens of Black residents and destroyed churches and schools, was still fresh in the minds of many who lived there. Yellow fever epidemics would devastate the city a few years later, but in 1870 residents knew Memphis first as the bluff-top river town where cotton, steamboats and trains met.
| Created / published | 1870 |
|---|---|
| Creator | ruger, a. |
| Notes | An original bird's-eye view map of Memphis, Tennessee, drawn in 1870. 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--Tennessee |
| Source | Library of Congress, Panoramic Maps |
| Original scan | 10,400 × 6,832 px · prints to 35 × 23 in at 300 dpi |
| Library of Congress title | Bird's eye view of the city of Memphis, Tennessee 1870 |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-OYK-490892 |
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