[Texas]: [Wellge, Henry]:

$18,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

PERSPECTIVE MAP OF THE CITY OF LAREDO, TEXAS. THE GATEWAY TO AND FROM MEXICO. A stunning bird's-eye view of the Texas border town of Laredo, produced in the early 1890s as a promotional piece by the Laredo Real Estate & Abstract Company. This energetic cityscape is the earliest bird's-eye view of the city, and shows a bustling and thriving community, with a dense grid of houses and businesses, a railroad line to the west of the town, and several coal refineries billowing black smoke from high stacks. To the south of Laredo is a portion of the northern Mexico city of Nuevo Laredo, located in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The two cities are prominently split in the lower third of the view by the spectacular Rio Grande River, with a railroad bridge and "electric motor" street bridge connecting the two cities.Vignettes along the lower portion of the sheet show prominent Laredo buildings, including City Hall, Webb County Court House, the Hotel Hamilton, the Laredo Improvement Company, and the Masonic Hall. The text at bottom enumerates fifteen "Facts about Laredo," comparative distances between Chicago and New Orleans, population, and import & export statistics from 1888 to January 1890."Directly west of Corpus Christi, once-somnolent Laredo on the Rio Grande had awakened to the quickening step of urbanization. The view produced in Figure 18.15 [the present view] shows the city about 1890, greatly expanded from the tiny plaza settlement of the eighteenth century. If one is to j

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