{"product_id":"maryland-in-1856-baltimore-annapolis-frederick","title":"Maryland in 1856 - Baltimore, Annapolis, Frederick","description":"\u003cp\u003eJ.H. Colton \u0026amp; Company of New York published this plan of Baltimore in 1856 as plate 23 of Colton's Atlas of the World, the firm's first world atlas after decades spent producing pocket maps, wall maps, and guidebooks, credited on the plate to G.W. Colton. This particular one-volume printing is scarcer than the more common two-volume edition, since the atlas had originally been sold by subscription and issued in parts before being bound complete, and the Baltimore sheet itself carries an ornate interlocking border typical of Colton's decorative house style. The city is divided into numbered regions washed in pink, yellow, green, and blue, a numbering system left without a printed legend on the sheet itself, a common shorthand on Colton's earlier city plans before his firm standardized ward keys in later atlases. By the mid-1850s Baltimore was already one of the busiest ports on the Eastern Seaboard, and this plan, made just five years before the Civil War, records a city expanding rapidly under that trade.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Patapsco River runs along the city's southern boundary, the waterway around which Baltimore's shipping and milling economy had been built since the previous century and that made the city a natural subject for Colton's ambitious new world atlas. The unreferenced numbered regions divide the built-up area into administrative sections whose color washes make the pattern of the city's growth legible even without a key, a visual shorthand Colton's engravers favored on compact urban plates. Streets and the harbor's edge are rendered with the fine, decorative line work that distinguished Colton's atlas from cheaper contemporary competitors, part of what made this debut world atlas one of the most accurate and long-running publications of its kind, continuing in print for more than thirty years under the later title Colton's General Atlas.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is a fitting choice for a Baltimore family with roots stretching back before the Civil War, someone who grew up near the harbor, or a collector building a shelf of pre-war American port-city plans. The Vault also carries Baltimore as mapped by S.A. Mitchell Jr. in 1860 and O.W. Gray in 1873; as the earliest of the three, made while Colton's atlas was still finding its footing as a first edition, this 1856 plan predates the ward-based systems both later publishers adopted, giving it a distinctly antebellum character the other two lack. It's available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TheMapVault","offers":[{"title":"16x20 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529673609547,"sku":"1771-16x20","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"A2 (42x60cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529673642315,"sku":"1771-A2","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"18x24 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529673675083,"sku":"1771-18x24","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"50x70 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529673707851,"sku":"1771-50x70","price":41.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"A1 (60x84cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529673740619,"sku":"1771-A1","price":55.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"24x32 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529673773387,"sku":"1771-24x32","price":55.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"70x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529673806155,"sku":"1771-70x100","price":69.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"75x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529673838923,"sku":"1771-75x100","price":69.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"A0 (84x119cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529673871691,"sku":"1771-A0","price":76.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0907\/2456\/5323\/files\/SKU1771.jpg?v=1789779935","url":"https:\/\/www.themapvault.com\/en-us\/products\/maryland-in-1856-baltimore-annapolis-frederick","provider":"TheMapVault","version":"1.0","type":"link"}