Snapshots of the Past

Balloon view of Washington, D.C., May 1861 – Vintage Wall Art

Balloon view of Washington, D.C., May 1861 — antique engraving
Balloon view of Washington, D.C., May 1861. Antique engraving from the Ballooning collection.

(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 engraving captures Balloon view of Washington, D.C., May 1861 in remarkable detail. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.

Framed, it is ready for the wall; unframed, it is ready for the frame you choose. Perfect for a home, office, library or classroom wall, and a gift with a story behind it. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Snapshots of the Past has been bringing history to the wall since 2001, for tens of thousands of customers worldwide.

Balloon view of Washington, D.C., May 1861

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This print offers a bird's-eye view of Washington, D.C., in May 1861, a rare vantage point at a moment when the city was filling with volunteer soldiers after the attack on Fort Sumter in April. Balloon views were still a novelty then, and wood engravings like this one let readers in distant towns see the capital's streets, monuments and open ground from above. Such pictures were valued as both documents and spectacles, showing a city preparing for war while it was still an unfinished and sprawling place. The view is worth studying for how little of the later Civil War landscape had yet taken shape.

Medium1 print : wood engraving.
Notes[no date recorded on caption card]
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan1,536 × 1,040 px · prints to 5 × 3 in at 300 dpi
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-HPA-122760

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