Old Map of London and Suburbs in 1886 by G.W. Colton - Westminster, Greenwich, Hampstead, Woolwich

George Woolworth Colton ran one of the most successful American map-publishing houses of the nineteenth century, and his firm's general atlases were a staple of libraries, schools, and businesses across the United States. By the 1880s the Colton company, then continued by his sons under the G.W. & C.B. Colton imprint, was producing city plans of the world's major capitals for these atlases, and its 1886 map of London and its suburbs reflects just how dramatically the British capital had grown in the decades since the Great Exhibition. Drawing on contemporary British surveys and railway company plans, the sheet was engraved to give American atlas subscribers a clear, up-to-date picture of a city that had roughly doubled in population since mid-century.

The map traces London outward from Westminster and the built-up core along the Thames, through Greenwich with its royal park and observatory on the river's south bank, up to the villas and heath of Hampstead in the north, and east to the docks and arsenal at Woolwich. Between these points the sheet fills in the railway lines threading toward Paddington, Euston, and King's Cross, the parks at Regent's and Hyde, and the ring of suburbs such as Highgate, Clapham, and Stratford that were rapidly being built up as London's population pushed outward along the new commuter lines.

This edition holds particular appeal for anyone researching Victorian London from an American or international angle, since Colton atlases were bought and kept far more often outside Britain than the domestic London map trade, making surviving copies an interesting artifact of how the city was pictured abroad. Local historians, transport enthusiasts tracing the spread of the railway suburbs, and collectors who enjoy American cartographic imprints of European cities will all find something of note. The print is scanned and reproduced at high resolution to keep the fine engraved detail sharp, and it's available across several print sizes to fit wherever you'd like to hang it.