{"product_id":"district-of-columbia-in-1856-washington-georgetown-capitol-hill","title":"District of Columbia in 1856 - Washington, Georgetown, Capitol Hill","description":"\u003cp\u003eJ.H. Colton \u0026amp; Company issued this plan of Georgetown and the City of Washington in 1856, part of the same debut world atlas that included the firm's Baltimore and Philadelphia plates, credited to G.W. Colton and bound into the scarcer one-volume edition of Colton's Atlas of the World. The sheet is distinguished among Colton's American city plans by three small engraved views set into its corners depicting the Smithsonian Institution, the Capitol, and the Washington Monument, each rendered in black-and-white detail against the full-color map itself, a decorative treatment reserved for the nation's capital rather than applied uniformly across the atlas. By 1856 Washington was still very much a city under construction, its government buildings and monuments only partially realized even as the plan records their intended prominence, and the decade before the Civil War was a period of steady if unglamorous growth for a capital that many contemporary visitors still found provincial compared with Northern commercial cities.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Potomac River is rendered in careful detail along the city's southern edge, its course fundamental to Washington's original siting and to the young capital's connections with the wider country. Georgetown appears as its own distinct district to the west, an older port settlement that predated the federal city and retained a separate identity even as Washington grew up around it. The Smithsonian Institution, the Capitol, and the Washington Monument are each singled out with their own inset engravings, underscoring how central these three institutions already were to the capital's self-image even while the Washington Monument itself remained unfinished construction at the time this plate was made. Streets and plots fill the space between the Potomac and Georgetown, reflecting the deliberate, monumental street plan Pierre L'Enfant had laid out decades earlier and that Washington's growth was still filling in.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis plan is a meaningful gift for a Washington-area family, someone with ties to Georgetown specifically, or a collector interested in the capital's antebellum, still-under-construction years. It stands alone among the Vault's District of Columbia offerings, a rare mid-1850s record of a capital city whose most iconic monuments were still being built even as this plan first put them on paper. 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":58529704051019,"sku":"1791-16x20","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A2 (42x60cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529704083787,"sku":"1791-A2","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"18x24 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529704116555,"sku":"1791-18x24","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"50x70 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529704149323,"sku":"1791-50x70","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A1 (60x84cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529704182091,"sku":"1791-A1","price":40.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"24x32 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529704214859,"sku":"1791-24x32","price":40.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"70x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529704247627,"sku":"1791-70x100","price":50.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"75x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529704280395,"sku":"1791-75x100","price":50.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A0 (84x119cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58529704313163,"sku":"1791-A0","price":55.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0907\/2456\/5323\/files\/SKU1791.jpg?v=1789780359","url":"https:\/\/www.themapvault.com\/products\/district-of-columbia-in-1856-washington-georgetown-capitol-hill","provider":"TheMapVault","version":"1.0","type":"link"}