1884 Stoner Bird's-Eye View of Cedar Key, Florida

This is an 1884 Joseph John Stoner bird's-eye view of Cedar Key, Florida. Depicting the city at its height, when Cedar Key was a boomtown and thriving port servicing Florida's lumber industry. Thirty-three locations are numerically identified and correspond with an index on either side of the view's title. Churches, hotels, sawmills, cedar mills, and general stores, rank among these locations. The Florida Transit and Peninsular Railroad curves through the view, its depot in the foreground on the right. Steamships, ferries, and sailing ships ply the waters around Cedar Key, reinforcing its economic importance and prosperity. Just two years after this view was published, Henry Plant's 'Plant System' railroad reached Tampa. This move took shipping away from Cedar Key and began the region's economic decline.

American Bird's-Eye City Views

The tradition of the bird's-eye city view emerged in the United States in the middle part of the 19th century and coincided with the commercial development of lithographic printing. While before the rise of lithography, the ability to own and display artwork in the home was largely limited to the extremely wealthy, lithographic printing made it possible for everyone to own visually striking artwork. A robust trade developed in portraits of political leaders, allegorical and religious images, and city views.

City views were being produced in the United States as early as the 1830s, but the genre exploded after the American Civil War (1861 - 1865). Bridging the gap between maps and pictures, most 19th century American Bird's-eye views presented cities to the public high vantage points. Some were imagined, but others were drawn from hot-air balloons or nearby hills. The presentation, combining high elevation, commercial interest, and new printing technology created a uniquely American art form, as described by historian Donald Karshan,

Some print connoisseurs believe that it was only with the advent of the full-blown city-view lithograph that American printmaking reached its first plateau of originality, making a historical contribution to the graphic arts. They cite the differences between the European city-view prints and the expansive American version that reflects a new land and a new attitude toward the land.

The vogue for bird's-eye city views lasted from about 1845 to 1920, during which period some 2,400 cities were thus portrayed, some multiple times. Although views were produced in many urban centers, the nexus of view production in the United States was Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The major American viewmakers were Stoner, Wellge, Bailey, Fowler, Hill, Ruger, Koch, Burleigh, Norris, and Morse, among others.

Publication History and Census

This view was drawn and published by Joseph John Stoner and printed by Beck and Pauli in 1884. Six examples are cataloged in OCLC and are part of the institutional collections at Cornell University, the Library of Congress, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Florida, Florida International University, and the University of California Berkeley.