Birds Eye View of the City of Houston, 1873
In the nearly four hundred years that it took for Texas to take its current shape the space changed from an extensive, unexplored and sparsely settled frontier under the Spanish Crown to its iconic and easily recognizable outline. Mapping Texas: From Frontier to the Lone Star State traces the cartographic history of Texas from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Over fifty rare maps from the collections of the Texas General Land Office and the personal collection of Frank and Carol Holcomb, of Houston, are on display. Additional maps are on loan from The Bryan Museum in Galveston and the Witte Museum in San Antonio. This exhibit runs at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
This map of Houston, drawn in 1873 by prolific map maker Augustus Koch,[1] is a fine example of what is known as a “bird’s eye view” or “panoramic” map. Presented from an imaginary, elevated point, these bird’s-eye view maps of cities were wildly popular in America in the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the early part of the twentieth century.[2] Providing a unique perspective on a city, these maps served more as an artistic city guide than a geographic resource. While depictions of streets and structures were often very accurate, the surrounding topography was often embellished, exaggerated or minimized.
This 1873 map presents Houston, then the third-largest city in Texas behind Galveston and San Antonio, as it would appear from an elevated point northwest of the city looking southeast. As was his style, Koch drew the horizon line of the map very close to the top of the map’s border, providing more space for the subject city and its surrounding environs.[3] In the foreground, Koch focuses on Buffalo Bayou, a navigable waterway critical to the economic activity of Houston at the time. He showed the bayou teeming with activity including rowboats, sailboats, and two giant steam-powered riverboat sisters bearing the names Diana and T.M. Bagby.
Koch also featured the important railway arteries and effectively relates how the railroad system and the bayou formed a crucial economic and transportation connection. He shows the Galveston, Houston & Henderson line (mistakenly labeled as the Houston, Henderson & Galveston) coming into Houston from Galveston and then crossing Buffalo Bayou over a newly constructed drawbridge. He also shows the “Texas Central RR” (probably in reality the Houston and Texas Central Railroad since the Texas Central Railroad was not chartered until 1879) running parallel to the bayou. It was this line, completed in 1873, that connected Houston to Denison in North Texas which, in turn, connected Houston to the full national network of railroads for the first time.[4]
One of the most impressive features of the map is its display of streets and structures. When making these maps, the artist would usually walk the streets of his subject city and make preliminary sketches and notes.[5] Koch likely employed this method, then used these resources to recreate the city, drawn accurately and to scale, from an imaginary elevated point. The result is an almost three-dimensional representation of the city of Houston.
A legend lists and labels thirty-nine different structures including the city’s churches and schools. Market House, located on Traves Street [sic], is shown on the map and is even featured as part of the title block despite the fact this building — which also housed Houston’s City Hall — was not opened until 1874.[6] These maps were often used to advertise a city’s desirability, so it would make sense to include significant buildings, even if they were not completed at the time of publication of the map.[7]
In addition to streets and structures, Koch also painstakingly added individual trees and chose to depict several pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages to add to the vibrancy of the city. These details help viewers believe they are looking at a snapshot of life in Houston in 1873 providing a charm unique to the bird’s-eye genre. This, combined with a distinctive perspective, likely explains why this style of map was so popular commercially.
This map is part of the Frank and Carol Holcomb Digital Map Collection.
Can’t make it to Houston? You can view the majority of the maps in this exhibit in high definition on the GLO’s website where you can also purchase reproductions and support the Save Texas History Program.
[1] Augustus Koch, a German who immigrated to Wisconsin with his parents sometime in the 1840s, first started drawing these bird’s eye view maps of cities in 1868 with a couple of views of cities in Iowa. For 30 years after that, he traveled the entire country creating 110 known maps in 23 different states. 1873 was his second-most prolific year, drawing and publishing 10 different maps of cities, four of which were in Texas. His last map was published in 1898 and after that, very little is known of the man including when he died. In fact, very little biographical data on Augustus Koch is known at all outside of his enlistment in the military in 1861 and subsequent service in a Union military regiment of Engineers stationed in the Lower Mississippi Valley during the Civil War. John W. Reps, Bird’s Eye Views, Historic Lithographs of North American Cities (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), pp. 184–186.
[2] Reps, Birds Eye Views…, pp. 7–11.
[3] John W. Reps, Views and Viewmakers of Urban America: lithographs of towns and cities in the United States and Canada, notes on the artists and publishers, and a union catalog of their work, 1825–1925 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984), p. 185.
[4] Handbook of Texas Online, David G. McComb, “Houston, TX,” accessed October 17, 2017, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hdh03. Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Modified on February 15, 2017. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
[5] Reps, Views and Viewmakers…, p. 10.
[6] Amon Carter Museum, “Texas Bird’s-Eye Views,” accessed September 18, 2017, http://www.birdseyeviews.org/zoom.php?city=Houston&year=1873&extra_info
[7] Reps, Views and Viewmakers…, p. 185.
