Alton, Illinois, 1867 – Historic Map Reproduction
(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
Few images capture their era like this antique map of Alton, Illinois, 1867. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.
Library of Congress record: Alton, Madison Co., Illinois 1867
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Alton, Illinois, 1867
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Alton sat on the Illinois bank of the Mississippi, upriver from St. Louis, in 1867, and it lived by river trade, flour milling, and stone quarrying. Steamboat landings anchored its commerce, and railroads reaching east toward Chicago were beginning to pull goods and people inland. Residents knew the town for hosting the fourth Lincoln–Douglas debate in October 1858, and for the 1837 killing of abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy, whose death had drawn national attention to the city. The street-by-street detail on this sheet records the warehouses, churches, and homes that merchants and mill owners were putting up in the years after the Civil War.
| Created / published | 1867 |
|---|---|
| Creator | chicago lithographing co, ruger, a. |
| Notes | An original bird's-eye view map of Alton, Illinois, drawn in 1867. 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 | 8,832 × 6,656 px · prints to 29 × 22 in at 300 dpi |
| Library of Congress title | Alton, Madison Co., Illinois 1867 |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-OYK-488553 |
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