Pennsylvania and Ohio in 1856 - Pittsburgh, Allegheny, Cincinnati

This map of Pittsburgh, Allegheny, and Cincinnati was engraved by G.W. Colton and published in 1856 by J.H. Colton & Co. of New York, appearing in Colton's Atlas of the World, the firm's first true world atlas after years of producing pocket maps, wall maps, and guides. This large one-volume 1856 printing is scarcer than the more commonly found two-volume edition issued the following year, and the sheet itself is notably economical in its production, enclosing two entirely separate city maps within a single ornate border rather than devoting a full sheet to each. Full color is used to mark out political and neighborhood boundaries within each city, a decorative touch typical of Colton's confident, richly bordered house style. The sheet pairs Pittsburgh and its neighboring borough of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, with Cincinnati, Ohio, two river cities then in the early stages of the industrial boom that would define them for the rest of the century.

Pittsburgh appears at the meeting of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, already earning its reputation as the Gateway to the West on the strength of its growing iron and glass manufacturing. Allegheny, mapped as its own separate borough rather than as a Pittsburgh neighborhood, reflects the independent municipal identity it held until its 1907 annexation. Cincinnati, some three hundred miles down the Ohio River, is shown as the era's self-styled Porkopolis, its economy built on meatpacking and river trade rather than the coal and steel taking hold in Pittsburgh. Despite the distance between them, both cities are tied together by the Ohio River, the single waterway that made this unusual two-city sheet a practical pairing for Colton's atlas.

This sheet suits a collector with ties to both western Pennsylvania and the Ohio Valley, or anyone assembling Colton's paired-city maps from the 1850s. It sits nearly sixty years later than the store's 1796 Collot plan of Pittsburgh, and where that earlier view shows a fortified frontier river town, this one shows Pittsburgh and Allegheny as established industrial boroughs, mapped alongside Cincinnati within Colton's rare large one-volume 1856 atlas edition. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.