Browse Items (63 total)

On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam on the Little Conemaugh River in southwest Pennsylvania, which held back the Lake Conemaugh reservoir, about fourteen miles upstream from Johnstown, failed after an unusually torrential rainfall. A little after…

This charming view of Lancaster was drawn on stone by James Benade, about whom we know relatively little not because he lacked talent, but because he died so young, at the age of 30. The son of a bishop of the Moravian Church in Bethlehem, Benade…

From Lucas’ Progressive Drawing Book.

Fielding Lucas, Jr., was primarily a cartographer who not only drew but also surveyed a number of the towns he was responsible for mapping. Early in his career he worked with publishers in Philadelphia;…

The borough of Shenandoah is located about fifteen miles southwest of Hazelton, within the Western Middle coalfield of Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region. Laid out in 1862 in reaction to the burgeoning need for coal during the Civil War, the…

Although the first settlers-other than Native Americans-came to the Punxsutawney area in the early nineteenth century, growth was relatively slow. By 1850 the town’s population had reached barely 100 inhabitants. The predominant industries were…

Not much can be added to the description of this event, which is provided in detail within the text below the image. What the historical archives have yet to reveal, though, is precisely why William White and his fellow “victuallers”—livestock…

The Smith brothers owe their introduction to the view making business to Edwin Whitefield. Francis and George Warren Smith worked as agents for Whitefield—they sold subscriptions in the various towns and cities he drew—as early as 1846, and…

Thaddeus Fowler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He ran away from home at age fifteen, and four years later he enlisted in the Union Army at the start of the Civil War. Wounded at the Battle of Bull Run, he was honorably discharged in 1863 and…

From volume II of Picturesque America

In June 1872, the publishing firm D. Appleton and Company sent its agents out across the country to solicit subscriptions for its ambitious Picturesque America. Already under production for several years, the…

Made in the same year as John Bachman's Bird's Eye View of Philadelphia, though from a less dramatic vantage point, this panoramic overlook was made after a watercolor by John William Hill, son of John Hill, who aquatinted the sheets from Lucas'…