Antique Map of Detroit, with Belle Isle Park, Rand McNally, 1899

Name: Antique Map of Detroit, with Belle Isle Park, Rand McNally, 1899
Brand: Rand McNally
SKU: BG-12793-2-44
Price: 385 USD
Availability: InStock

$385

€345 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

Buy now Ask a question

Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.

Date: 1899
Maker: Rand McNally
Kind: Maps
Technique: Lithograph
Color: Printed color
Size: 52 × 69 cm (20.5 × 27.2 in)
Condition: Good. Good condition for its age. Light age toning, faint offsetting in the upper right margin and the original central fold as issued. Please review the images for further condition details.
Period: The Gilded Age
Places: Michigan
Reference: BG-12793-2-44

What the condition grades mean

Excellent: Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
Very good: Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
Good: Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
Fair: Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.

Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.

Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.

Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured. Delivery and import charges.

About this piece

Headed "Detroit and Vicinity", this antique map of Detroit by Rand McNally, 1899, lays out the city's street grid along the Detroit River, with Windsor and the Canadian shore opposite in a contrasting printed tint.

The international boundary runs down the middle of the waterway. Belle Isle Park is marked in the river above the city, and the radiating avenues, Woodward, Michigan and Grand River, that give Detroit's plan its distinctive spoke pattern are laid in against the more conventional block plan of the surrounding wards. A pale tint distinguishes city from township, and the river is left white.

Street and steam railway lines are picked out across the built-up area, and the working waterfront, already busy with shipping and the beginnings of the manufacturing that would define the city in the following decades, is shown in some detail. The Canadian shore is left comparatively bare beyond Windsor's own streets, underlining how much more built up the American side already was by the 1890s. A scale bar and the atlas's cross-reference page numbers run along the lower margin.

Rand, McNally and Company, the Chicago firm that issued the 1899 indexed atlas, grew from the printing business William Rand started in the 1850s, later joined by Andrew McNally. By the 1890s it was among the leading map publishers in the United States, known for railroad and commercial maps revised with each new issue.

The sheet is a color lithograph, the outline printed in black and every color printed over it rather than applied by hand. Once framed, this antique map of Detroit would suit a home or office in the city today, and it will appeal to collectors of American city plans and local history.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light age toning, faint offsetting in the upper right margin and the original central fold as issued. Please review the images for further condition details.

This is an original antique map, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.

★