The Collected Home

8 tinted lithographs as printed by the Chicago Lithographing Company and depicting the Jesuite Church, View from Lake View House, Universalist Church, North Presbyterian Church, Douglas' Monument, Second Baptist Church, Plymouth Congregational Church, and Congregational Church; many with accompanying literary descriptions by James W. Sheahan (1824-1883) in German.

Oblong folio (264 x 349 mm). 8 tinted lithograph plates (of 54 issued) and some leaves of accompanying German text. (Some leaves lacking or detached, some soiling, toning and chipping, a few annotations). Contemporary brown roan-backed boards, paper lettering-piece to front cover (defective, worn, soiled). 

Riding a wave of civic pride in the aftermath of the Civil War's end Otto Jevne, Peter Almini, Louis Kurz and Edward Carqueville established the Chicago Lithographing Company whose aim was "to publish...an illustrated history of Chicago," a city which had come to be identified more and more in public consciousness with the recently assassinated president, Abraham Lincoln. As the largest foreign language group in America at the time of publication, German immigrants to the United States comprised 20 percent of Chicago's population in 1860 (Keil & Jentz), prompting the translation of the original English text into German. Sold as a collection of plates not subject to return. Keil & Jentz, German Workers in Chicago, 1988, p.5.