THE POST-FIRE CITY ON DISPLAY

Wittemann Brothers

Views of Chicago [Souvenir accordion-fold view album, with photographic views reproduced by Louis Glaser’s Process.]

New York: Wittemann Brothers, [ca. 1885].
FIFTEEN PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEWS OF CHICAGO’S GREAT POST-FIRE REBUILDING.
A compact photographic tour of Chicago during its extraordinary post-Fire rebuilding, this miniature souvenir album presents the commercial buildings, hotels, transportation centers, streets, parks, and civic landmarks of the rapidly expanding city. 

THE NEW CITY TAKES SHAPE
Its views include the Court House and City Hall, Custom House and Post Office, State Street, Palmer House, Grand Pacific Hotel, McVicker’s Theatre, Central Music Hall, Board of Trade, Union Depot, Madison Street, North Side Water Works, and scenes in Lincoln and Union parks.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS: A MINIATURE ACCORDION VIEWBOOK.
 Original tan cloth-covered boards with elaborate black and blue-gray ornamental decoration, front cover lettered Views of Chicago. Accordion-fold contents comprising 15 captioned photographic views on 12 panels, several panels containing multiple images. Views reproduced from photographs by Louis Glaser’s Process. Oblong album measuring approximately 5 × 2¼ inches closed.

CONDITION: WELL PRESERVED. Very Good. A bright, well-preserved example. Light age-toning and minor scattered spotting, principally to the blank endpapers and margins. Cloth covers show mild age wear and rubbing. Accordion folds remain intact and the photographic views are clean and well defined.

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE:CHICAGO A REBUILT CITY ON DISPLAY.
Produced little more than a decade after the Great Chicago Fire, the album presents the rebuilt city through the architecture that symbolized its recovery and growing national importance. Civic buildings, major hotels, transportation facilities, commercial streets, theaters, waterworks, and landscaped parks collectively portray Chicago as a modern metropolitan center.

The format is also significant. Souvenir viewbooks were produced specifically for travelers and were also used to promote cities to potential residents and investors; the Library of Congress collection contains more than 1,000 American examples and notes Wittemann Brothers as a major early producer of the form.

LOUIS GLASER’S PROCESS.
The album explicitly identifies its images as photographs reproduced by Louis Glaser’s Process. Wittemann Brothers employed the process for a series of compact photographic souvenir albums of American cities and scenery during this period. Comparable institutional records document Wittemann/Glaser accordion albums from the early 1880s onward.

GENRES: Viewbooks, souvenir albums, photographic viewbooks, travel ephemera, urban photography, Chicago ephemera
SUBJECTS: Chicago, Illinois, Chicago architecture, Chicago history, urban development, Louis Glaser, Wittemann Brothers, Board of Trade, Palmer House, Grand Pacific Hotel, State Street, Chicago parks, nineteenth-century tourism.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
Chicago Public Library. 
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division. 
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. 
Columbia University Libraries / WorldCat. 
NYU Special Collections.

Item #22452

Price: $195.00