Wish You Were Here: Guidebooks, Viewbooks, Photographs, and Maps of New York City, 1807-1940
Title
Wish You Were Here: Guidebooks, Viewbooks, Photographs, and Maps of New York City, 1807-1940
Source
From the Collection of Mark D. Tomasko
Collection Items
The Picture of New-York; or, the Traveller’s Guide through the Commercial Metropolis of the United States.
Mitchill’s book is generally considered the first guide to New York City. He mentions how inaccurate some of the geographies are regarding New York, and cites the Picture of London, Oxford Guide, and Tableau de Paris as examples of what he is trying…
The Picture of New-York; or, the Traveller’s Guide through the Commercial Metropolis of the United States.
Mitchill’s book is generally considered the first guide to New York City. He mentions how inaccurate some of the geographies are regarding New York, and cites the Picture of London, Oxford Guide, and Tableau de Paris as examples of what he is trying…
The Citizens Directory and Strangers Guide through the City of New York.
The first 69 pages of 446 are a good description of New York and its institutions. Stanford also issued those 69 pages in 1814 as a separate publication, A Concise Description of the City of New York. Topics include Early History and General…
Blunt’s Stranger’s Guide to the City of New-York.
Blunt’s is the second guidebook of New York, with a significant map engraved by W. Hooker and three intaglio-engraved views. A chart shows the population of the leading cities of the East Coast, with New York City surpassing Philadelphia by 1810.…
The Description of the City of New-York .?.?.
The book is in two parts, the first being a history of the City in 144 pages (of 360), followed by a description of the City for the remainder of the book. It is a remarkably comprehensive description on a larger-format page than the other early…
The Picture of New York, and Stranger’s Guide to the Commer-cial Metropolis of the United States.
According to I. N. P. Stokes in The Iconography of Manhattan Island (vol. 6, p. 267), Goodrich essentially republished Blunt’s guide in 1818, with some updating for an 1825 edition; but for the 1828 edition, there was much revision and considerable…
New-York as It Is, in 1837: Containing a General Description of the City of New-York, List of Officers, Public Institutions, and other Useful Information. Including the Public Officers &c. of the City of Brooklyn. Accompanied by a Correct Map.
John Disturnell was a map publisher who started his New-York as It Is series in 1833 with a much smaller volume in both physical size and page count. This 1837 edition is the largest of the run and has a folding map and one intaglio-engraved view,…
A Description of the City of New York: with a Brief Account of the Cities, Towns, Villages and Places of Resort within Thirty Miles .?.?.
After the New-York as It Is series, Disturnell teamed up with O. L. Holley to produce this volume. Following the description of New York, page 89 starts “Excursions Around the City of New York,” which constitutes 24 of the guide’s 114 pages. There…
The Merchant’s Business Directory and Stranger’s Guide for 1847 & 48 .?.?.
The business directory constitutes 30 pages out of the 151 in the volume, and is simply called “Subscribers’ Names” where it starts. The map has been produced by what appears to be a woodblock print, with streets depicted by rectangular blocks. Maps…
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