Map of Saratoga Springs Saratoga Co. New York

Map of Saratoga Springs Saratoga Co. New York

1848

John Bevan, City Surveyor, Jersey City, New York

Shows Saratoga Springs, including corporation lines. Map included many businesses, civic institutions, and personal properties. Subscribers are listed on the right side.

English

John Bevan

Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Subscribers listed on map

Map

Nineteenth-century Americans moved increasingly into cities. At the same time, lithography revolutionized printing and mapmakers realized that they could profit by turning city plans into decorative wall hangings. By 1848, Saratoga Springs had attracted an outside, city-boosting mapmaker. Surveyor, lithographer and printer John Bevan’s 1848 map features a familiar-looking city center. If read closely, this detailed map reveals the who, what, where, and why of the city’s growth.

A list of map subscribers displaying personal and civic pride (on the right) includes prominent town residents like the Putnam family and Chancellor Reuben Hyde Walworth. Building outlines and footprints show the increase in businesses and attractions, such as the United States Hotel, Congress Hall, mineral springs, and the Saratoga & Schenectady Railroad. The eye follows the town’s growth up Broadway, tracking the line of mineral springs anchored at High Rock to the north and Congress Spring to the south, mapping both spatial development and the reason for it.

“Map of Saratoga Springs Saratoga Co. New York,” Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project, accessed March 23, 2015, http://ssmp.skidmore.edu/items/show/27.

1848

The Saratoga Springs History Museum (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.)

Bevan, John

ca 1848

ca 1848

Top Left: " Ca 1848"
Bottom Right: "21"

Nineteenth-century Americans moved increasingly into cities. At the same time, lithography revolutionized printing and mapmakers realized that they could profit by turning city plans into decorative wall hangings. By 1848, Saratoga Springs had attracted an outside, city-boosting mapmaker. Surveyor, lithographer and printer John Bevan’s 1848 map features a familiar-looking city center. If read closely, this detailed map reveals the who, what, where, and why of the city’s growth.

A list of map subscribers displaying personal and civic pride (on the right) includes prominent town residents like the Putnam family and Chancellor Reuben Hyde Walworth. Building outlines and footprints show the increase in businesses and attractions, such as the United States Hotel, Congress Hall, mineral springs, and the Saratoga & Schenectady Railroad. The eye follows the town’s growth up Broadway, tracking the line of mineral springs anchored at High Rock to the north and Congress Spring to the south, mapping both spatial development and the reason for it.

The Saratoga Springs History Museum (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.)

City

City Plan

Property maps

Road maps

Civic Life

Property and Development

Transportation

Church-- Baptist
Church-- Catholic
Church-- Episcopal
Church-- Methodist
Church-- Presbyterian
Circular Railroad (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.)
Saratoga and Washington Railroad

Columbian Spring (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.)
Congress Spring (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.)
Empire Spring (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.)
Flat Rock Springs (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.)
Hamilton Spring (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.)
High Rock Spring (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.)
Iodine Spring (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.)
Washington Spring (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.)

Clarke
Walton
Putnam
Livingston
Hamilton

John Bevan

Jersey City, NJ and New York City, NY

37.5”h x 27.75”w plus margins (Boston Rare Maps)
73 x 62 cm (LOC)

400 feet to the inch

6/3/2014
6/21/2014
3/26/2015

LOC copy is digitized.

Additional information on the map available at Boston Rare Maps.  The first published map of Saratoga Springs, and a considerable rarity. - See more description & a zoomable color copy of the at Boston Rare Maps, which sold a copy.  Not only does it depict the city’s topographical features, street plan, and rail lines, but it also includes property boundaries and the footprints of individual buildings. The many springs and bathhouses that drove the town’s economy are shown in some detail, including in many places the canals and channels used to move the healing waters from their source to the paying customers. Also shown are the many grand hotels built to house visitors, including the enormous United States and Grand Union Hotels on the west side of Broadway. The race course for which the town is now famous was built along Congress Street in 1863, on a parcel just southeast of the area shown on the map. The visual appeal of the map is enhanced by a fine lithographic vignette of the Empire Springs establishment, an ornate compass rose, and a finely-wrought foliate border. A list at left identifies more than 100 individuals and firms who paid subscriptions to help fund the map’s production. According to OCLC John Bevan published dozens of separately-issued town maps between 1850 and 1860, mostly for towns in New York, but also in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Though the Saratoga Springs map is undated, the layout and the known dates of Bevan’s other maps strongly suggest an early-mid 1850s date of publication. Most Bevan maps are extremely rare, with OCLC recording but one or two institutional holdings for each and Antique Map Price Record listing none at all offered for sale in the past quarter century. http://www.bostonraremaps.com/catalogues/BRM1627.HTM