{"product_id":"old-birds-eye-map-of-cincinnati-by-wentzel-1867-roebling-bridge-ohio-r-m-e-canal-main-vine-hills","title":"Old Bird's-Eye Map of Cincinnati by Wentzel, 1867: Roebling Bridge, Ohio R, M\u0026E Canal, Main \u0026 Vine, Hills","description":"\u003cp\u003eCincinnati, Jean Frederic Wentzel’s 1867 color lithograph, captures the Queen City at the instant it announces itself as a modern metropolis. Issued from both Paris and Wissembourg, the work showcases the new John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge striding across the Ohio River to Covington, a gleaming emblem of postwar confidence and engineering daring. The river teems with steamboats, their movement animating a waterfront crowded with commerce, while the surrounding hills frame a dense, rectilinear city center. This is an especially notable city map because it distills a transformative moment: Cincinnati emerging from the Civil War as a connected, outward-looking hub, its civic order and industrial vigor rendered in vibrant chromolithographic tones that make the topography, streets, and skyline read with striking clarity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe lithograph orchestrates Cincinnati’s ordered grid with a cartographer’s precision and an artist’s eye. Front and Third streets anchor the riverfront bustle, stepping inland to Fourth and Fifth where mercantile and civic life concentrate. North–south arteries—Broadway, Main, Vine, Race, Elm, and Plum—lock the fabric into a coherent plan, while Canal Street traces the historic margin of the Miami and Erie Canal, long a commercial lifeline and a social boundary. Pike and Myrtle add local texture to the matrix. The surrounding hills, richly vegetated, enfold the urban basin, highlighting the city’s amphitheater-like setting along the Ohio. Across the water, Covington’s tidy grid echoes Cincinnati’s confidence, underscoring a cross-river metropolis whose symmetry and scale the map conveys with quietly persuasive authority.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTransportation modernity is the narrative thread that binds this scene. The Roebling Suspension Bridge—prototype to the later Brooklyn Bridge—signals an audacious leap in mobility, knitting Ohio and Kentucky into a single economic organism. On the river, side-wheelers and stern-wheelers crowd the current, visual shorthand for Cincinnati’s role as a gateway to the interior and a clearinghouse for Midwestern goods. The city’s streetcar era, inaugurated in 1859, is legible in the disciplined corridors of Main, Vine, and Broadway, where the rectilinear plan anticipates efficient movement of people and freight. As infrastructure converges—bridge, river, and street—the map crystallizes a new urban tempo, one driven by schedules, spans, and steel, and it does so in a way few city views of the period manage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCommerce and community both leave their imprint in the blocks between Fourth and Fifth streets and along the river landing, where warehouses, countinghouses, and hotels once pulsed with activity. Canal Street hints at the lively districts north of the waterway—later famed as Over-the-Rhine—whose breweries, shops, and dense tenements fed the city’s manufacturing and cultural life. To the west and south, the grid dissolves into the steep, leafy hills that gave Cincinnati its dramatic vistas and its intimate neighborhoods. This is what makes the map an exceptional city document: it balances monumental infrastructure with everyday routes and locales, reading as both a portrait of power and a human-scaled guide to streets where business, transit, and sociability intertwined.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJean Frederic Wentzel’s decision to issue this view from Paris as well as Wissembourg speaks to a shrewd internationalism. With the Paris World’s Fair on the horizon, he recognized European appetite for images of American modernity and selected Cincinnati—then a manufacturing colossus—as an exemplar. His chromolithographic craft heightens legibility and allure: the Ohio River’s cool blues, the bridge’s delicate catenaries, the warm masonry of riverfront blocks, and the deep greens of encircling hills together create an image that is documentary and celebratory at once. The result is a map that bridges continents as deftly as the Roebling bridges shores, preserving a pivotal, post-Civil War city at the precise moment it took its place on the world stage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStreets and roads on this map\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBroadway\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCanal Street\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eElm Street\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFifth Street\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFourth Street\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFront Street\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMain Street\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMyrtle Avenue\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePike Street\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePlum Street\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRace Street\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThird Street\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eVine Street\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNotable Features \u0026amp; Landmarks\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJohn A. Roebling Suspension Bridge\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOhio River\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eVarious steamboats\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCityscape of Cincinnati with numerous buildings and structures\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe surrounding hills and vegetation\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHistorical and design context\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDate of creation: 1867, shortly after the Civil War\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThemes: Highlights the city’s modernity following completion of the suspension bridge\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDesign\/style: City antique color lithograph using vibrant colors to showcase the cityscape and surrounding landscape\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHistorical significance: Marks Cincinnati’s evolution into a world-class city and major manufacturing hub; notes development of streetcars in 1859 and other urban infrastructure\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePublisher\/context: Issued in Paris and Wissembourg by Wentzel; expansion to a Paris office around the Paris World’s Fair to reach broader audiences\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlease double check the images to make sure that a specific town or place is shown on this map. You can also get in touch and ask us to check the map for you.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis map looks great at every size, but I always recommend going for a larger size if you have space. That way you can easily make out all of the details. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis map looks amazing at sizes all the way up to 70in (180cm). If you are looking for a larger map, please \u003ca href=\"\/de\/pages\/contact-us\"\u003eget in touch\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eThe model in the listing images is holding the 24x36in (60x90cm) version of this map.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe fifth listing image shows an example of my map personalisation service.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIf you’re looking for something slightly different, check out my collection of the \u003ca href=\"\/de\/collections\/all-old-vintage-antique-maps\"\u003ebest old maps\u003c\/a\u003e to see if something else catches your eye.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlease \u003ca href=\"\/de\/pages\/contact-us\"\u003econtact me\u003c\/a\u003e to check if a certain location, landmark or feature is shown on this map.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis would make a wonderful birthday, Christmas, Father's Day, work leaving, anniversary or housewarming gift for someone from the areas covered by this map.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis map is available as a giclée print on acid free archival matte paper, or you can buy it framed. The frame is a nice, simple black frame that suits most aesthetics. Please get in touch if you'd like a different frame colour or material. My frames are glazed with super-clear museum-grade acrylic (perspex\/acrylite), which is significantly less reflective than glass, safer, and will always arrive in perfect condition.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Unique Maps Co.","offers":[{"title":"12x18in (30x45cm) \/ Map","offer_id":58018781790592,"sku":"UM00276484A","price":75.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true},{"title":"12x18in (30x45cm) \/ Framed map","offer_id":58018781823360,"sku":"UM00276485A","price":202.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true},{"title":"12x18in (30x45cm) \/ Framed canvas map","offer_id":58018781856128,"sku":"UM00276486A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true},{"title":"A3 (297x420mm) \/ Map","offer_id":58018781888896,"sku":"UM00276487A","price":75.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true},{"title":"A3 (297x420mm) \/ Framed map","offer_id":58018781921664,"sku":"UM00276488A","price":202.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true},{"title":"A3 (297x420mm) \/ Framed canvas 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