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For those who cannot easily visit the BPL map center, they've done a
nice job of getting their bird's eye views online:
http://maps.bpl.org/search_advanced/?mhid=9 .
Joel Kovarsky
On 2/23/2010 3:44 PM, Roberta Williams wrote:
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From early in the nineteenth century until the turn of the
twentieth-century, the bird's eye views were hand drawn by itinerant
artists (I prefer to call them map makers). They were sold by
subscription and after enough subscriptions were taken to make the
job profitable the map maker would make a sketch of the town. They
were first done in pencil as the artist walked the streets of the
town, placing homes in the proper position on the map. He would send
the map to a trusted lithographer who then transferred the drawing to
stone. I don't believe tethered balloons were ever used to draw the
maps (it took about two weeks to finish a map of a small town), but
the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library has
the first air photo taken of Boston and it does not contain the detail
that the bird's eye maps convey. The Leventhal Map Center also had a
tremendous collection of the birds' eye views!
Bobbie Williams
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