Panoramic maps, more commonly called "bird's-eye views," were a staple visual item of 19th
century American culture. They evolved from a variety of origins, including the panoramic
paintings of the Baroque era, the complex illustrated maps of the earliest colonial period in North
America, and the more general tradition of booster and advertising productions that characterized
much of the visual output of the expanding American frontier. When they focused on cities, they
were usually called "bird's-eyes," "bird's-eye views," and "city views."
One function of these cities was to give some sense of the topography of the expanding United States, in particular to viewers from the east or even from Europe seeking information about the phenomenon of transcontinental growth and urban expansion characterizing the era from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the 20th century.
Panoramic maps promised a remarkable feat-- to comprise the rapidly expanding city, to encapsulate it, and to show its order. By choosing the appropriate angle of view and point of distance, the bird's eye view could convert the confusing warren of streets and multi-height structures strewn across the rapidly developing laissez-faire urban landscape, revealing the underlying grid, clarifying the way the process of development was changing the topography of the region.
But panoramas of this sort often had a boldly commercial function: to market real estate and to sell the city to potential immigrants, to businesses, to railroads and freight lines: to present urban development as a fact so palpable that it could persuade viewers to make it true-- by settling, by purchasing lots and building on them, by setting a rail or freight or riverboat terminus there.
Pannoramic maps of the larger cities served in the more complex and cutthroat competition for status as megalopolis: choice as the site for an International Exposition, for example, or simply general reputation. And these maps sold well, not only to those far away who were intrigued by the place, but by residents themselves. As a result, large-scale companies like Currier&Ives; assumed an increasingly important role in producing or marketing these panoramic maps. By the turn of the century, however, "captive-air" balloon photographic panoramas by firms like the Lawrence Company of Chicago had superceded these maps.
The panoramic maps reproduced here are found in the Library of Congress of the United States. They are part of the larger American Memory Project, which includes complex searches of maps, panoramic photographs, and samples from many of the Library's extensive collections.
The City of Chicago, showing the burnt district, 1874 by Currier & Ives
Bird's eye view of Chicago, 1892 by Peter Roy Chicago, central business section. By Arno B. Reincke 1916