Savannah & Charleston Map 1865 City Plan - Savannah, Charleston, Washington Race Course

Joseph Hutchins Colton, whose New York firm was among the most prolific American mapmaking houses of the mid-nineteenth century, issued this pairing of two city plans on a single sheet in 1865: Colton's The City of Savannah, Georgia, alongside Colton's The City of Charleston, South Carolina. Colton had built his business from the 1830s onward on high-quality steel engraving and decorative bordering, qualities on display in both plans here, which together represent two of the earliest town plans of southern cities to appear in a commercial atlas. The pairing captures Savannah and Charleston at the close of the Civil War, when both cities, longtime rivals as the Southeast's leading Atlantic ports, were reckoning with occupation and the collapse of the plantation economy that had built their prewar wealth. Publishing both plans on one sheet let Colton offer a single, economical reference to two of the South's most historically significant coastal cities.

The Savannah plan shows streets, roads, buildings, rail stations and depots, together with a note on the city's 1776 founding and a reference key naming 24 places of interest, giving it unusual documentary depth for a city plan of this scale. The Charleston plan is similarly rich, marking streets, buildings, the Washington Race Course, ponds and a military arsenal, a reminder of the city's status as a garrisoned Confederate stronghold through most of the war. Both cities anchor their respective Low Country coastlines, Savannah on the Savannah River and Charleston on its namesake harbor, geography that made each a natural target for Union naval blockade throughout the conflict. Augusta, further up the Savannah River in Georgia's interior, and Columbia, South Carolina's capital, both round out the map's two-state coverage beyond the coastal plans themselves.

A fitting gift for a Georgia or South Carolina family with roots in either historic port city, or for a Savannah or Charleston transplant drawn to a map capturing their city at the very end of the Civil War. Pairing two rival southern ports on one sheet gives this map a natural conversation-piece quality that a single-city plan wouldn't carry on its own. It's supplied unframed and available across our full range of sizes, from a small desk print to a large-format piece for a bigger wall.