Pennsylvania and New Jersey in 1890 - Philadelphia, Camden, Harrisburg

W.H. Gamble drew and engraved this joint plan of Philadelphia and Camden in 1887, copyrighted that year by Wm. M. Bradley & Bro. before being reissued in 1890 within Mitchell's New General Atlas under the John Y. Huber Company's Philadelphia and St. Louis imprint, attributed to Samuel Augustus Mitchell. The plan spans pages 42 and 43 of an atlas built around ninety-three quarto maps and updated with 1880 census figures for every state, territory, and city over ten thousand residents, a level of contemporary detail the firm marketed heavily in its title. Hand-colored with relief shown by hachures, the sheet uses shading to render terrain rather than the flat color washes typical of most ward-based city plans of the period, a more labor-intensive technique reserved for the atlas's more prominent metropolitan plates. By 1890 Philadelphia and Camden functioned as a single, ferry-linked urban region straddling the Delaware River, and this joint plan treats the two cities as the integrated economic unit they had effectively become.

Fairmount Park is labeled prominently on the Philadelphia side, its considerable acreage recorded directly on the sheet as one of the largest urban parks in the country at the time. The Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers both appear in detail, the Delaware forming the boundary between Philadelphia and Camden and the Schuylkill marking the western edge of the built-up city, both waterways essential to the region's commerce. Ferry routes are marked crossing the Delaware, the vital connections that let residents and goods move between the two cities well before any bridge spanned the river at this scale. Numbered wards divide both Philadelphia and Camden into administrative sections, each hand-colored to distinguish the boundaries at a glance, giving the plan the dual character of a governance document and a navigational guide.

This plan suits a Philadelphia or South Jersey family whose history spans both banks of the Delaware, someone whose ancestors once relied on the ferry crossing between the two cities, or a collector interested in joint metropolitan plans from the 1890 census era. The Vault also carries Philadelphia alone as mapped by O.W. Gray in 1873 and J.H. Colton in 1856; this 1890 Huber edition is distinguished from both by its dual coverage of Camden and its use of hachured relief rather than flat ward color. It's available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.