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View of Ephrata
To anyone interested in bird’s-eye views of Pennsylvania towns during the late nineteenth century, the name of Thaddeus Fowler appears on a seemingly endless number of panoramic images. He was the most prolific of all the view makers, drawing and…
Pittsburgh
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…
Homestead
Homestead, located about seven miles south of Pittsburgh on the Monongahela River, was home to the Homestead Steel Works, the smoking conglomeration of buildings located here in the upper left, along the banks of the river. In the summer of 1892, the…
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…