Bird's-Eye View of New Orleans, 1885

The story of this map

Currier & Ives issued this view of New Orleans in 1885, the year the city hosted the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition and half the country came to look. It shows why the place is called the Crescent City: the Mississippi sweeps across the foreground in its great bend, and the city fills the curve. Our restored print is made from the coloured lithograph in the Library of Congress.

The river is thick with paddle steamers, their twin stacks trailing smoke, and the levee is lined with them nose to shore. Behind it the streets of the French Quarter and the American sector run in their slightly skewed grids, church towers and warehouses drawn in, and the whole city tapers away toward the flat line of Lake Pontchartrain on the horizon. Currier & Ives coloured it in warm greens and river browns that suit a New Orleans room perfectly.

This is a print for a Garden District parlour, a Bywater kitchen, a bar or a restaurant, or anyone who has ever fallen for the city. It belongs to our American Cities collection and pairs with the Mississippi River meander map from our Charts and Themed collection, or with the Gulf Coast chart from our Nautical Charts.

Printed to order on archival matte paper and framed in the country of delivery.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Restoration plan: crop scan margins, balance colour cast and levels while keeping the paper tone, remove library stamps and scanner artefacts if present, gentle sharpening. The LC print is recorded as conserved in 1972 and 1976; any visible repair lines will be softened without redrawing. No repainting of original content.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.