Bird's-Eye Views
This article originally appeared in Exchange,
a newsletter published by the Wisconsin Historical
Society. (Volume 29, Number 2, Spring 1987) It is
the fifth in a series of articles titled Researching
Community History. The series highlights
the Society's resources available to local
historians. It was written by Tom McKay,
retired local history coordinator for the
Wisconsin Historical Society.
Slides, snapshots, home movies and the ubiquitous camera strapped
around every tourist's neck offer reminders of an instinctual
need to produce pictorial records that can be traced
back to petroglyphs and cave paintings. While photography
continued to emerge in the last half of the 19th century
as a means to satisfy this need, engravings and lithographs, techniques
for converting drawings to prints, remained important parts of the
pictorial record of everyday life. For the community
historian, the 19th-century bird's-eye view, one form of printed pictorial
record, represents a valuable research tool.
Bird's-eye views depicted communities as panoramas seen from above.
Though neither map nor photograph, bird's-eye views
combined elements of both while lacking the precision
of either. As detailed representations of communities,
the views reproduced a record of street patterns and
names, bodies of water, railroad lines, landmarks,
and each of the houses, barns, factories, stores, and
public buildings in the town. The resulting illustrations
captured a tremendous amount of information, and the
map collection in the Archives of
the Wisconsin Historical Society includes
more than 160 bird's-eye views of communities from
all parts of Wisconsin. Local historians can write
to the Society to purchase a pamphlet compiled in 1975
which lists the bird's-eye views in its collection.
Although the 1870s and 1880s represented the heyday
of the bird's-eye view, the Society's collection ranges
from an 1852 illustration of Milwaukee to a 1915 depiction
of Superior in a view of the twin ports.
Artists began their bird's-eye views by sketching all of the buildings on every street and each feature of the surrounding area for the subject community. After studying the sketches, the artist selected a "vantage point" and translated the sketches into the completed perspective illustration. A variety of artists and lithographers engaged in the bird's-eye view trade with some resulting variance in the quality and style of the products. However, nearly all bird's-eye views will include accurate street patterns and names, illustrations of buildings depicting the main details of major structures, and identification of schools and churches.
As a commercial venture, accuracy and detail helped sell bird's-eye views. Comparing an 1896 bird's-eye view of Washburn with photographs of the same period offers insight into the accuracy that could be achieved. As expected, a photograph shows that the prominent Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha Railway elevator in the foreground is accurate down to the exact number and placement of its many windows and doors. The bird's-eye renders less important buildings and houses in a generic style, but period photographs, where available, indicate that even those structures have the correct number of windows and doors. Church steeples, towers on the city hall, and the smokestacks on the Washburn brewery all appear in the appropriate size, style, and position.
Bird's-eye view of Mauston,
1870s. Courtesy of the
Wisconsin Historical Society's
map collection.
(Click on the
image
for a larger version.
Bird's-eye views can offer much more to the local historian than details of individual buildings. They also contain a record of settlement pattern, environment, and community activities. For example, the 1881 view of Peshtigo indicates the burned out forest on the town's outskirts that remained from the huge fire ten years earlier. An 1870s bird's-eye of Mauston shows, on the edge of town, the stockyards and railroad siding of a livestock shipping business. The main business district along Mauston's State Street appears in detail, and a cluster of false front buildings on Mansion Street pinpoints the location of a secondary business district. Lancaster's 1875 bird's-eye view shows that unlike its present-day downtown, the primary commercial district of that time extended along Maple Street away from the largely undeveloped courthouse square. A glance out into the countryside shows not only the location of a racetrack at the fairgrounds but also the size and orientation of the grandstand
 Detail from a bird's-eye
view
of Mauston, 1870s.
Courtesy of the
Wisconsin Historical
Society's map collection.
(Click on image
for alarger version.)
While much of the historical record contained in bird's-eye views can be pieced together and actually studied in more detail through other sources, some of the information is unique. An 1880 view of Alma provides a record of every business building with wharf or levee facilities for riverboats. The 1885 bird's-eye of Waupun includes a detailed inset of the Althouse, Wheeler & Co. windmill factory complex. The inset identifies every building in the complex by function: foundry, wood shop, warehouse, machine shop, paint shop, etc.
Inset illustrations were a feature, designed to sell more prints, that appeared on some bird's-eye views. The 1896 view of Washburn contained 20 insets, each a careful rendition of a major building in the community. While a list of churches and schools was standard for bird's-eyes, some of the views added the businesses and homes of prominent residents or subscribers. The 1880 view of Alma has a list of 45 entries keyed to the illustration. While most represent leading citizens, Mr. Probst's small boatworks, located in two sheds along the Mississippi, also appears on the list.
Bird's-eye views contain a wealth of information, but they are, true
to their name, overviews and most useful in combination
with other sources, even other bird's-eyes. For example,
comparing the 1871 view of Lake Geneva with an 1882
version shows that one of the two mills along the millrace
added a smokestack and steam power during the intervening
eleven years. Statistics from the manuscript records
of the federal census for Buffalo County provide a
better understanding of the Probst boatworks identified on the 1880
Alma bird's-eye view. Historic bird's-eye views froze communities
at a point in time. Today they give local historians a window in time
which, when used with other historical sources, can increase the understanding
of a community's history.
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