Item #008766 Gray’s New Map of Saint Louis (Map 129 from Gray’s Atlas of the United States)

Gray’s New Map of Saint Louis (Map 129 from Gray’s Atlas of the United States)

Philadelphia: O. W. Gray & Son, [1877]. Unbound. Approximately 14” x 17” including the margins. Strong, clear image with hand-coloring.

This attractive map of St. Louis shows the streets of the city in detail. Additionally, locations of several historically important sites are shown:

Lafayette Park, where Jere Frain laid out the city’s first baseball diamond in the 1850s,

The St. Louis Fairground (now Fairground Park) the site of annual St. Louis Agricultural and Mechanical Expositions where the first St. Louis Zoo (consisting of a monkey house, a carnivore house, a bear pit, and several other attractions) opened in 1876,

Tower Grove Park, which had been donated to the city by Henry Shaw a scant nine years earlier,

The Florissant Rail Road, a 16-mile narrow gauge passenger line that would open the following year and run between the intersection of Olive Boulevard and Grand Avenue in the city to St. Ferdinand Street in Florissant,

Bridge, unlabeled but the only span crossing the Mississippi River, and

Brooklyn, Illinois, the oldest incorporated African-American town in the United States which was founded in 1829 by "Mother" Priscilla Baltimore (who is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery). Very good. Item #008766

Rather scarce. As of 2018, OCLC shows no institutional holding of this printing although two institutions hold later editions. The Rare Book Hub contains one auction result for a later edition of the map, and three later editions from the 1880s are for currently sale in the trade.

Price: $150.00

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