Item #11129 Washington The Beautiful Capital Of The Nation. William OLSEN.
Washington The Beautiful Capital Of The Nation
Washington The Beautiful Capital Of The Nation
Washington The Beautiful Capital Of The Nation
A Remarkably Wide-Ranging Yet Still Precise
Aerial View of Washington
Washington, DC/ Railroads.
[Washington, 1923]

Washington The Beautiful Capital Of The Nation.

20 x 28 ½ inches, With a regional railroad map on verso. Lightly toned, else excellent. With travelers' guide booklet, 48 pp, with several photographic images & a plan of the city; a few mends & some wear to covers but overall excellent.

A very scarce and precise "Aero View" of Washington, DC, as seen from the southeast, self described, not entirely without justification, as "the most remarkable picture map that has ever been made."  With a 48-page travel guide to the city illustrating its notable attractions.  Referring to a larger version of the same view published in 1921, Reps says:

"For this very large and comprehensive view, the artist, William Olsen, selected   an extremely high elevation that allowed him to embrace almost all of the city. It        is a revealing portrait of Washington at the beginning of the post-World War I    period.  Olsen included not only the several new permanent buildings proudly           mentioned in the report of the Fine Arts Commission but the graceless temporary             structures erected on the Mall to overcome the wartime shortage of office space."

The fine structural detail for this work, Olsen says, "has all been sketched from the ground and every block and building is in proper survey." 

Although it nowhere directly says so, this iteration of the view was a publication of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.  Above the map is the header: Baltimore and Ohio America's First Railroad and Washington's First Railroad; it was chartered in 1827.

Cf. Reps, J. W. Washington on View, pp. 262-63.

 

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