Browse Items (1402 total)

Map from the company's 1897 annual report shows the extent of this primarily industrial railroad, whose main purpose was to deliver coal from Pennsylvania mines to the industrial cities of Rochester and Buffalo. From the latter location, coal could…

Located in Washington, DC, this impressive building was designed in the French Second Empire style. As its name suggests the structure housed several important departments that eventually outgrew available space. The building still stands today,…

At the time of this photograph the buildings and trees shown on Main Street were little more ten years old, rebuilt in 1892 after a devastating fire. In addition to the Soldiers Monument (dedicated in 1900), the Hotel Kreisler figures…

Postcard shows the junction of East and State Streets, including what the writer calls "Our much talked of monument." At this time the Soldiers Monument, dedicated in 1900 by then-governor Theodore Roosevelt, would have been seven years old and an…

Named after the miller Theophilus Short, this small village of perhaps 800 seems to have been using this map in an aspirational way: by visualizing itself as a place to which more businesses and people would locate. The main appeal was its situation…

Bird's eye view looking northwest shows the rapidly growing town of 3,200 located along Oatka Creek. Founded in 1803 from the Holland Purchase tract, agriculture followed the clearing of timber and by the later 19th century the town's economy was a…

Detailed map of former Erie Canal boomtown reflects its growth into a large city half a century later. Looking north, from Highland Park, we can trace the Genesee River to Lake Ontario. Several features from Rochester's earliest days still are…

From a vantage point looking westward, we see the town of approximately 3,000 about a century after its first settlers began arriving following the 1797 Big Tree treaty. Incorporated in 1814, Perry initially was an agricultural area that increasingly…

Looking roughly to the east, bird's eye view shows Oatka Creek winding through town of 5,000 as of 1890--the second largest in Genesee County after Batavia. First settled in 1793, Le Roy was created in 1812 from a portion of the Caledonia land…

At the time of this bird's eye view, the city of Geneva was one of the most important population centers in the Finger Lakes--as indicated by the 99 different points listed on Lucien R. Burleigh's map. The Seneca village of Kanadaseaga at the…