1850 Mitchell / Cowperthwait Map of Washington D.C. & Georgetown

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Title:    City of Washington.

Description:    This beautiful hand colored map is a lithographic engraving of Washington D.C., Capitol of the United States, dating to 1850. Detailed to the point of depicting many individual buildings. Map includes Georgetown and has a plan of the first floor of the Capitol Building. Produced by the legendary American map publisher S. A. Mitchell Sr. in conjunction with the Cowperthwait firm of Philadelphia, PA. Dated and copyrighted “1850 by Thomas Cowperthwait & Co in the Clerk’s Office of the District court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.”.

Date:    1850 (dated)

References:    None found.

Cartographer:    Samuel Augustus Mitchell (March 20, 1792 - December 20, 1868) Senior began his map publishing career in the early 1830s. Having worked as a school teacher, Mitchell was frustrated with the low quality and inaccuracy of school texts of the period. His first maps were an attempt to rectify this problem. In the next 20 years Mitchell would become the most prominent American map publisher of the mid-19th century. Mitchell worked with prominent engravers J. H. Young, H. S. Tanner, and H. N. Burroughs before attaining the full copyright on his maps in 1847. In 1849 Mitchell teamed up with printer Cowperthwait & Company to produce the Mitchell's Universal Atlas and the Mitchell's General Atlas. In the late 1850s most of the Mitchell copyrights were bought by Desilver and Co. who continued to publish his maps, many with modified borders and color schemes, until Mitchell's son, Samuel Augustus Mitchell Junior, entered the picture. S.A. Mitchell Jr. purchased most of the copyrights back from Desilver and, from 1860 on, published his own New General Atlas. The younger Mitchell became as prominent as his father and published atlases well into the late 1880s when most of the copyrights were again sold and the Mitchell firm closed its doors for the final time. Click here for a list of rare maps from Samuel Augustus Mitchell.

Size:   Printed area measures 16 x 12.5 inches (40.64 x 31.75 centimeters)

Condition:    Very good condition. Blank on verso.

Code:   WashingtonDC-m-1850 (Necessary for phone inquiries: 646-320-8650)