May 19, 2015 - Sale 2384

Sale 2384 - Lot 125

Price Realized: $ 25,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) Boschke, A. Map of Washington City District of Columbia Seat of the Federal Government. Respectfully dedicated to the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of North America. Survey and Published by A. Boschke C. E. 1857. Very large hand-colored lithographed map of Washington, D.C., with elaborate decorative border incorporating numerous inset vignettes. 1525x1475 mm (i.e., 60x58 inches); dissected and mounted on new linen; few chips to the edges of individual sheets, but overall a very attractive example of this extremely scarce map. New York: Julius Bien, 1857

Additional Details

Boschke's map of 1857 is one of, if not the most, impressive map of antebellum Washington. Boschke worked on his survey of the city and surrounding areas in the lead up to the Civil War, but following the fall of Fort Sumpter the capital's position was deemed very precarious, and detailed plans of the area were seen as sensitive intelligence. The War Department seized the plates for Boschke's 1861 map, ending its production and limiting extant copies to but a few proofs. The 1857 edition may have suffered from some similar fate, as today it is extremely rare; we were able to track only one example on the market in the last 60 years, and that one in a dealer's catalog from 1958. Miller, Washington in Maps, 1606-2000, pages 84-87.