The
Bird’s Eye View
By Michael L. Dixon
Two Bird’s-Eye-Views
of Cecil County in the first decade of the twentieth century were
painstakingly drawn on paper, showing Rising Sun and Elkton as seen from an
imaginary viewpoint high in the air.
These nearly 100-year old views of streets, houses, and buildings
provide snapshots of the towns frozen in time, offering detailed depictions of
landmarks and life that has come and gone.
A popular cartographic form in the United States during the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, the drawings were also known as panoramic
map. Although not drawn precisely to
scale, they show busy towns, the streets filled with carriages, stores
surrounded by activity, and trains approaching railroad stations. They also show major landscape features in
perspective. In addition, several
detailed vignettes of certain buildings are included on each of the maps. Of course, the subscriber paid a fee to have
his building included in the inset.
Cecil County’s
views were created by Thaddeus M. Fowler (1842 – 1922) of Morrisville,
Pennsylvania in 1907. Born in Lowell,
Mass., he served as a soldier in the 21st Regiment of the New York
Volunteers at Elmira, New York. After
receiving a wound at the Second Battle of Bull Run, he began his career as a
tintypist, photographing soldiers during the Civil War.[i] After the war, he got into the town view
business. Fowler would arrive in a town
and secure local businessmen to invest in his project. Once he got the capital, he would walk the
streets to sketch the town. His medium
was pen and pencil. Then the artist
would give the work to a lithographer, who prepared the published version. Fowler died in 1922 at the age of eighty
after falling and breaking his leg on an icy street in Middletown, New
York. He was sketching yet another city
view.
This prolific
artist produced 426 town and city views in his lifetime.[ii]
His Rising Sun print, which measures
17 ˝ “ X 20 ˝.”, includes 12 detailed vignettes of buildings in town. Those include the store of J. S. Pogue &
Sons, the dwelling and store of Scott Wilson, Duyckinck Sterrett & Co., and
Cooney Bakery and Restaurant. The
Elkton print, measuring 18” X 22”, includes nine insets. Those focus on churches and the public and
industrial buildings in the county seat.
For
researchers interested in how Rising Sun and Elkton appeared before World War
I, these once popular wall hangings during the Victorian-era can be an
important source of historical information.
The illustrations of prominent and not so prominent buildings are
essential references for they depict individual structures and their
relationship to one another. With some
luck, you may be able to find a sketch of your house on one of these panoramic
views in the collection at the Historical Society.
[i]
John R. Herbert, John R., Panoramic Maps of Cities in the United States and
Canada, A Checklist of Maps in
the Collections of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division., Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1984: 7 – 8.
[ii]
Reps, John W. Views and
Viewmakers of Urban America, Lithographs
of Towns and Cities in the United States and Canada, Notes on the Artists and
Publishers, and a Union Catalog of their Works, 1825 – 1925. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1984: 14 – 15
& 174 - 177
