John Bachmann

Bird's eye view from Lower Manhattan: Scarce. After C. Bachman and published by John Bachmann/Williams & Stevens. Bachmann’s most celebrated bird’s eye view taken from an imaginary point just above the Union Square and looking south to the Battery. The view appears to be from a great height but is compiled on a grid from hundreds of in-situ sketches, maps, surveys and land records. It is particularly noted for its detail of Lower Manhattan that allows for individual residences to be picked out with emphasis on the Croton Aqueduct Fountain, twin to that in City Hall Park. Civic projects like the aqueduct were objects of great pride and seen to be transforming American urban spaces to rival those of Europe.

Bird’s eye views grew in popularity from the mid 1850’s with an often idealised and exaggerated representation of new development whilst the less attractive elements of expansion were minimised or even removed; the Croton aqueduct crumbled and leaked almost from the day of completion. In the United States these optimistic bird’s eye views soon became a vast organic commercial enterprise in marketing the marvels of industrialisation and urbanisation with publishers, individuals, businesses and politicians keen to promote their towns.

Bachmann was one of the most successful of these publishers/artists of the bird’s eye views in the United States but by the turn of the 20th century the rapid changes in cityscapes rendered the hand drawn views almost immediately obsolete at publication and they were replaced with aerial photography.