Bird's-Eye View of Sacramento, 1890

The story of this map

Sacramento grew up at the meeting of two rivers as the supply town for the Gold Rush, and by 1890 it was the settled capital of California, a railway town of tree-lined streets and brick blocks. W. W. Elliott & Company drew this bird’s-eye view that year and the city’s own newspaper, the Daily Record-Union, published it. Our restored print is made from the Library of Congress copy.

Elliott’s view is generous with detail. The river front and its landings lie along the foreground, the grid of numbered and lettered streets runs back across the sheet, and every block is drawn with its houses, stores and churches. Around and below the view sit illustrated vignettes of the city’s notable buildings, a block of descriptive text and a numbered index to points of interest, so the print doubles as a walking guide to Victorian Sacramento.

This is a print for a Midtown bungalow, a state office, a Land Park hallway or anyone with roots in the Central Valley. Its warm, sunlit colouring suits wood and white walls. It belongs to our American Cities collection and pairs naturally with the 1868 view of San Francisco, or with the Lake Tahoe topographic map from our Topographic collection for a Northern California wall.

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. 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.