1876 Askevold Pocket Map or Plan of Chicago, Illinois

An extremely rare 1876 pocket map of Chicago, Illinois by the Anders M. Askevold. This Chicago published map covers from Central Park in the west to Lack Michigan in the east, and from Lincoln Park in the north to Union Stock Yards in the south. City wards are numerically identified and coded by color. All streets, rail lines, parks, important municipal buildings, piers, canals, and rivers are noted.

With the completion of the Pacific Railroad in 1869, the 1870s were a period of astounding development, optimism, and expansion throughout Chicago. Despite the seemingly enormous setback of the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, the city's growth barely slowed. This decade witnessed the implementation of the city's 'boulevard' system and the inauguration of parks along the lakefront, Lincoln Park, shown here, being the best known example. The 1870s and 1880s also fostered the rise of the Chicago as a center of map publication. In this Aksevold was a pioneer and his work is among the earliest and scarcest Chicago based cartographic work - especially compared with the mind-boggling volume of later Chicago publishers like Rand McNally and George Cram.

The OCLC identifies only two known examples, one at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, and a second in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. There is a third example and the only known example of the 1876 edition.