Beschreibung:

[NEW YORK] VIELE, EGBERT. The Topography and Hydrology of New York. New York: Robert Craighead, 1865. First edition thus. Publisher's purple gilt stamped cloth rebacked with modern red cloth. The text 13 pp. Contains the large folding map Topographical Map of the City of New York Showing Original Water Courses and Made Land. Hand-colored lithographed folding map dissected and laid to linen. The map 19 3/4 x 65 inches (50 x 165 cm); the text 9 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches (23.5 x 14 cm). Fading to cloth extremities, the text title page with a bookseller label at foot, the rear endpaper with an old crossed-out stamp and small chipped newspaper clipping affixed, provenance notes to pastedown (see below), faint dampstain to lower right corner of text leaves, the map quite bright overall with a few spots and some showthrough of adhesive . Provenance: A. Oakey Hall, pencil signature to front pastedown dated 1865 (Hall was the mayor of New York City from 1869-1872); G.W. Cram(?), ink notation to foot of pastedown reporting the book purchased by Cram at the Oakey sale, 10 September 1905. "The most enduring nineteenth century map of Manhattan" ( Manhattan in Maps ). The current map is a great expansion of Viele's original plan of Central Park and was issued at a time of great concern over sanitation and disease in the city. The map has found great utility in the decades that followed including being referenced at the time of the building of the Empire State Building and also United Nations Plaza. Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan Island , Volume III, p. 777 & pl. 155; Cohen and Augustyn. Manhattan in Maps , p. 137. C Estate of Frances Tower Thacher