[Philadelphia & Pennsylvania] Hills, John: This Plan of the City of Philadelphia and it's Environs...

The Martin P. Snyder Copy

Hills, John
This Plan of the City of Philadelphia and it's Environs, (Shewing the Improved Parts,) is Dedicated to the Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens thereof
(London): Published, 1st January, 1798. by Messrs. John & Josiah Boydell. Second issue (with Boydell imprint at bottom). Engraved map, by John Cooke; on James Whatman Turkey Mill Kent 1794 watermarked paper; 29 3/8 x 43 in. (746 x 1092 mm). Creasing from old folds, expertly repaired separations along all edges; small chip in bottom left corner; wear and chipping along top edge. Snyder, City of Independence 169a (this copy illustrated as Fig. 121); Deak 211; Phillips, p. 702; Phillips, Descriptive List of Maps and Views of Philadelphia 175 (first issue); Wheat & Brun 471; Ristow, p. 250-51

The Martin P. Snyder copy of the best map of Philadelphia published during its time as the capital of the United States. Framed with the Schuylkill River on the left and the Delaware River on the right and extending north from Kensington to south with parts of Moyamensing, Hills's map depicts in fine detail Philadelphia at the turn of the century during a great period of growth. A key at left notes over 48 landmarks in the nation's then capital, including numerous places of worship, including Christ Church, the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, Congregation Mikveh Israel, and the Friends Meeting House. Other important institutions are depicted, including the University of Pennsylvania, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, the State House and City Hall, as well the banks of North America and the United States.

Hills was one of the foremost cartographers of the American Revolution and one of the leading mapmakers of Philadelphia following independence. During the war he served in the British Army as an Ensign in the 38th Regiment and later as a lieutenant in the 23rd Regiment, and completed several important manuscript maps of battles, marches, and military plans. He resigned from the army in 1784 and remained in America, settling first in Princeton, and then in Philadelphia, where he established himself as a draftsman and surveyor. In 1796, with the support of Philadelphia’s mayor, Matthew Clark, Hills completed this map, which has come to be considered “the most important survey of the city of the Post-Revolutionary generation" and that is "today a landmark of early American urban cartography.” (Stanford Libraries)

Very rare, only one copy of either state of this map has appeared at auction since 1990.

Martin P. Snyder

Bloomsbury Auctions, New York, The Jay T. Snider Collection, November 19, 2008, Lot 199