Houston, Texas, 1891 – Antique Wall Map
(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
A window into the past: Houston, Texas, 1891, preserved in this antique map. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.
Library of Congress record: Houston, Texas ... 1891
The framed print arrives ready to hang; the unframed option suits custom framing. A conversation-starting piece for home, office, or as a meaningful gift. 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.
Houston, Texas, 1891
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Houston, Texas, in 1891 was a city of roughly 27,000 people, built around Buffalo Bayou on land the Allen brothers had laid out in 1836. Cotton was the commercial engine of the place, and bales moved through its warehouses and rail yards toward the Gulf port of Galveston, about fifty miles south. By the early 1890s several railroads converged on the city, making it a distribution point for the interior of the state. Residents knew it as a rail and trade center still waiting on a deep-water channel, which would not open until 1914. The map shows that moment, with the bayou's slow bends running past the dense blocks of downtown.
| Created / published | 1891 |
|---|---|
| Notes | An original bird's-eye view map of Houston, Texas, drawn in 1891. 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--Texas |
| Source | Library of Congress, Panoramic Maps |
| Original scan | 13,516 × 8,416 px · prints to 45 × 28 in at 300 dpi |
| Library of Congress title | Houston, Texas ... 1891 |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-OYK-490923 |
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