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Go directly to the collection, Panoramic Maps, in American Memory, or view a Summary of Resources related to the collection.
Historical thinking requires analysis and
Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929, can be used to develop this important
skill. A researcher must dig deeply to find both traditional and alternative
historical narratives, be willing to study these sources closely, and
to synthesize a wide range of information. An historian must be able to
comprehend content, as well as to interconnect information from a variety
of sources through chronological thinking, the formulation of good questions,
analysis and interpretation of data, and the ability to identify what
is relevant. The following activity ideas provide the starting points
to practice these skills.
Chronological Thinking
It is possible to use material from Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929, to develop
chronological thinking skills. Search for two or more maps of the same
city at different time periods and compare them, with an eye toward understanding
the rapid growth of cities and the changes in urban life during the era
of industrialization. Then compile a list of changes as shown by the maps.
Panoramic maps of Chicago, when compared across three different time periods,
clearly demonstrate the tenor of urban development in the era of industrialization.
Use the mouth of the Chicago River as a reference point to answer questions
such as:
- Between 1868 and 1916, how did harbor buildings and shipping traffic
change at the mouth of the Chicago River?
- How did the presence of railroads in Chicago change over time?
- Can you locate venues of recreation in all three maps: baseball
diamonds, parks, beaches, promenades?
On October 9,
1871, the Great Chicago Fire swept across about 1,900 acres in the
center of the city, destroying approximately 2,200 stores, 160 manufacturing
sites, and the homes of nearly 100,000 people–an estimated
47 percent of the property owned in the city. How did this fire affect
the growth of Chicago? Search
American Memory on the term fire AND 1871 to research the answer.
You will find, for example, The Lakeside Memorial of the Burning
of Chicago in the Books
section of The
Nineteenth Century in Print. Is the information from such sources
represented in the panoramic maps?
- How did the growth of Chicago after the fire affect the city's lake
front?
- How did the architecture of downtown Chicago change after the Great Chicago
Fire of 1871? Search
American Memory on the terms Louis
Sullivan and Daniel
H. Burnham to learn more.
- Does the 1874 map accurately reflect that portion of Chicago that remained
destroyed three years after the fire?
Some towns have comprehensive plans for their future development.
Does your hometown have one? If so, get a copy and envision what your
city will look like in twenty, fifty, or one hundred years. If there
is no town plan, or you wish to develop a better plan, work in a group
to create one. You might want to consider topics such as city planning,
the importance of demographics to planning, commercial and residential
zoning, the importance of both efficiency and beauty to a healthy city,
gaining political approval of a plan, and implementing change.
Historical Comprehension
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Panoramic maps of certain industrial cities in the late nineteenth
century, studied in conjunction with films from other American Memory
collections, allow one to understand the life of a factory worker in
industrialized North America.
Click, for instance, on the map of Wilmerding,
Pennsylvania and locate the Westinghouse Air Brake Company. Then,
search
on the term Wilmerding in the collection, Inside
an American Factory: Westinghouse Works, 1904. You will
find three
films from 1904 that take you inside the Westinghouse Air
Brake factory to see foundrymen pouring hot liquid into molds
and performing other tasks. Together, the map and the films form
a particularly powerful narrative regarding the life of a Wilmerding
factory worker.
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Wilmerding, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
T. M. Fowler, Mapmaker,
1897. |
- What were the activities of a Westinghouse worker?
- Where, in Wilmerding, might these working men have lived? What percent
of their wages went into housing?
- Was Wilmerding a company town the way that Pullman, Illinois was?
- What was the relationship of the factory to the rest of the town?
- Do you think that these men would have understood the importance
of transportation to the success of the industrial era economy?
Another set of resources includes an 1890 Bird's-Eye
View of the Chicago Packing Houses & Union Stock Yards and films
from America
at Work, America at Leisure, 1894-1915 found by searching
on stockyards. You will find three
films, shot in 1897, which take you inside these same stockyards
to see cattle and sheep being driven to slaughter, and the electric
trolley that ran inside the Armour plant. Together, the map and films
help us to envision daily life in the stockyards and to pose relevant
questions.
- What might an average day of a stockyard worker have been like?
- Where did the stockyard workers live, relax, and worship?
- Have you ever heard the expression "back of the yards," also known
as "Packing Town?" This was the neighborhood next to the slaughter
yards and the meat-packing houses. Although the Chicago stockyards
are a thing of the past, the neighborhood retains an identity to this
day. Search the Web on the term back of the yards to find out
more. Is this area depicted in the panoramic map of the stockyards?
- The
Jungle by Upton Sinclair provides a literary portrayal of
the Chicago stockyards. Did the novelist and the mapmaker depict the
stockyards in the same way? What does each media contribute to your
understanding of this area?
- What, specifically, do panoramic maps add to the understanding
of factory life and industrialization?
Historical Analysis and Interpretation
Cartographers invested incredible amounts of time in researching and
creating panoramic maps, rendering details with amazing accuracy. For
each project, a frame or projection was developed, showing, in perspective,
the pattern of streets. The artist then walked the streets, sketching
buildings, trees, and other features to present a complete and accurate
landscape. In one of his maps, Augustus Koch shaded all the buildings
constructed of brick. When late-twentieth-century researchers compared
his map to fire insurance maps of that era, the mapmaker's shading proved
to be completely accurate.
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Nevertheless, one must be careful when analyzing and interpreting
these maps or any historical material, and consider the influences
behind the creation of such materials. Many of these nineteenth-century
panoramas were prepared for a chambers of commerce or for real
estate agencies in order to advertise a city's commercial and
residential potential. Using this map of
Dallas, Texas, discuss ways in which advertisers and other
funding sources might have influenced the way that the city is
presented. Notice the importance of advertising to this map and
the depiction of the city's "projected river and navigation improvements."
What do these features suggest about the purpose of this map and
the goals of its funders and creator? Did the projected improvements
actually take place?
Similarly, in an 1852 View
of Washington, the mapmaker presents the Washington Monument
as complete and surrounded by a pediment at the base. In fact,
however, the monument was not completed
until 1884, and the pediment, although part of the original design,
was never built. Click to the left-of-center on the horizon line
for a close-up of the monument.
Another way to identify errors or exaggerations in maps and the
factors that may have caused them is to compare them with photographs
of the same locations. Choose the name of a town and search
in Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929, for a cartographic view;
then search
on the same town in Taking
the Long View, 1851-1991 for a photographer's view of
that same location. Is the harbor as busy? Does a specific building
have the same number of stories? What is the overall effect of
these small differences? Do they matter?
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Dallas,
Texas,
Paul Giraud,
1892.
Washington,
D.C.,
E. Sachse,
1852.
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Design a map that promotes the commercial development of your hometown or
another town of your choice. What items do you find yourself including
and excluding from your map? Why?
Historical Issue-Analysis and Decision-Making
In 1893, the world's fair was held in Chicago. It celebrated the 400th
anniversary of Columbus's voyage of discovery and was thus called The
World's Columbian Exposition. Amidst the Depression of 1893, the fair
sought to provide a utopian view of the United States as the fruit of
progress generated by uniting the forces of high culture and commerce.
The Fair's chief architect, Daniel Burnham, expressed this utopian ideal
in the neoclassical building facades, broad walkways, and lush gardens
of that portion of the Fair situated along Chicago's waterfront, called
the "White City."
World's
Columbian Exposition,
Chicago, Illinois,
1893. |
While the Fair and White City made room for commerce
and culture, this utopia did not include African Americans. Blacks
were prohibited from exhibiting and systematically excluded from
planning or working at the Fair. This fact caused Frederick
Douglass, Commissioner of the Fair's Haitian pavilion, to state
that at the Fair "the spirit of American caste made itself conspicuously
felt against the educated American negro." (Douglass had been U.S.
Minister to Haiti, and was invited by that nation to speak at the
dedication of their pavilion.) American Blacks did attend the Fair,
however, and among those attending were the composers Scott Joplin
and Will Marion Cook, the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, the writer
James Weldon Johnson, and Ida Wells, who co-wrote the pamphlet "The
Reason Why The Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian
Exposition." |
Panoramic maps of "White City" do not depict or even hint at the segregation
and racism that was reaching its height at the turn of the nineteenth
century. (Only three years after the Fair, in 1896, the Supreme Court
upheld the principle of racial segregation in United States schools
in the Plessy v. Ferguson case.) Had the mapmaker been aware,
concerned, and free to do so, was there a way that he might have depicted
the social problems of this otherwise utopian city?
- Did American Blacks experience similar exclusion from the 1876
Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the 1883
Southern Exposition in Louisville, Kentucky; the 1897 Tennessee Centennial
Exposition in Nashville, Tennessee; or the 1906 Louisiana Purchase
Exposition, known as the St. Louis World's Fair? Can you tell from
the maps of these fairs?
- Was Jim Crow in force on the fairgrounds in South Weymouth, Massachusetts,
in 1885, or in Morrisville, Vermont, in 1889? What sources, in addition
to the panoramic maps, would you have to research to uncover your
answer?
- In what way do the panoramic maps depict the cities and towns of
the United States as utopias?
- What were the dictates of the mapmakers' craft or business that
might have lead the mapmaker to depict a city in a certain light?
Historical Research Capabilities
Historical inquiry depends on the ability to formulate interesting
questions and define topics worthy of investigation. Panoramic Maps,
1847-1929, provides materials that challenge us to do just that.
The collection suggests questions such as:
- To what extent does the mapmaker help to shape history?
- Did panoramic mapmakers actually help to populate the urban centers
that they depicted as vibrant and growing?
- Is the goal of the panoramic mapmaker vastly different from that
of any other mapmaker -- a military cartographer, for example?
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Place a panoramic map alongside a military map and examine the
different ways in which they present similar data. Here are two
maps of the Baltimore, Maryland area. What are the similarities
and differences between the military map on the left, from the
collection Civil
War Maps, and the panoramic map on the right?
The following collections will provide useful examples of military
maps that may be compared to typical panoramic maps.
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Military
Map,
Baltimore County, Maryland,
Pvt. Geo. Kaiser, Mapmaker,
1863. |
View
of Baltimore City,
Maryland from the North,
E. Sachse & Co., Publisher,
1862. |
There are only a few panoramic maps that depict nineteenth-century
military encampments. See, for example, a bird's-eye view of Camp
Chase near Columbus, Ohio; Fort
Collins in Colorado; or Fort
Reno in Oklahoma Territory.
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