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Punxsutawney
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…
Clearfield
Clearfield was named after the numerous open fields, thought to have been cleared by bison that once roamed western Pennsylvania, that were discovered where what today is known as Clearfield Creek flows into the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.…
Pennsylvania Railroad Car Shops
The Pennsylvania Railroad founded Altoona specifically as a location for the repair and new construction of its locomotives and freight and passenger cars. The facilities, begun in 1850 and expanded continuously throughout the following seventy-five…
Catasauqua, Pa.
This representation of Catasauqua, in 1873 already a fairly substantial town located on the Lehigh River just east of Allentown, provides the perfect model for demonstrating the often complicated history behind the production of bird's-eye views. For…
Valley Forge, Pa.
Known today almost exclusively as the location where the Continental Army camped in the winter of 1777-78 during the American Revolutionary War, Valley Forge, as this lithograph demonstrates, was a small but thriving town throughout much of the later…
View of Reading, Pa.
The plan for Reading was laid out in 1743 by Richard and Thomas Penn, the sons of William Penn and proprietors of the colony of Pennsylvania since the elder Penn's death in 1718. The town, soon to be the county seat of Berks County (chartered in…
Lewisburgh
After partnering with Thaddeus Fowler in Milwaukee during the early 1870s, Oakley Bailey moved in 1875 to Cambridge, Massachusetts, his wife's hometown, and set up his own lithography firm in Boston. Although Connecticut and Massachusetts towns…
View of Williamsport, Pa.
Today a community with widely diversified industries, Williamsport was, from the time of its founding in 1795, and still in 1854 when John Bachelder created his drawing, a thriving lumber city. This view of Williamsport was sketched from the slopes…
Lock Haven, Pa., 1881
Landscape painter Charles Louis Fussell was born and raised in the Philadelphia area. Just before the start of the Civil War, and for several years after, he trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. From the late 1860s until his death in…
Bird’s Eye View of Philadelphia
This spectacular view of Philadelphia, looking southwest from Camden, New Jersey, across the Delaware River, was created by John Bachmann just a few years after he emigrated from Switzerland. The bird's-eye vantage point, though in use for some time…