Pennsylvania in 1796 - Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Harrisburg

This plan of the town of Pittsburg was drawn by the French general Georges Henri Victor Collot and engraved by P.F. Tardieu, published in Paris in 1826 by Arthus Bertrand as part of Collot's A Journey in North America, one of the earliest detailed surveys of the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys, though the map itself was based on a reconnaissance journey Collot undertook in 1796 at the request of the French minister Adet, its publication delayed three decades until after Collot's death in 1805. The map is a finely engraved plan with precise military-survey annotations, its scale given in fathoms rather than the standard land measure of American maps of the period, a choice that reflects Collot's background as a military engineer. It covers Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the confluence that gave the town its purpose, drawn at a moment when the young United States, only recently free of British and Native resistance in the region, was just beginning to press its settlements west of the Alleghenies.

The ruins of Fort Pitt are marked on the map, a site whose fortifications had once anchored British control of the Ohio Valley during the French and Indian War. Fort Lafayette, its replacement, appears alongside it, evidence of the continuing federal military presence at this strategic river junction after the Revolution. The Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers are drawn converging to form the Ohio River, the triple confluence that had drawn settlement to the site in the first place. Coal mines are identified on the sheet, an early sign of the mineral wealth that would define Pittsburgh's economy for the next century and a half, alongside a stone quarry and the roads connecting the town to its surrounding countryside.

This early plan suits a collector with deep Pittsburgh roots or anyone drawn to the earliest surveyed views of the American frontier, made at a moment when the young republic was just beginning to press west of the Alleghenies. It predates the store's 1856 Colton sheet pairing Pittsburgh and Allegheny with Cincinnati by nearly sixty years, and where that later map shows an established industrial borough, this one captures a fortified river outpost only recently emerged from its military origins. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.