Item Info
Media Type: Lithographs
Source: Print and Picture Collection
Notes:
The origin of the University was from a Charity School, and an Academy, which were chartered and endowed in 1753. In 1779, it was erected into a College, an din 1789 into a University. Subsequently, they were separated, the College was revived, but again in 1791 they were re-united, and have continued so ever since.
They embrace an Academical Department, in which the usual College course of four years is purused: and a Medical Department, being the most ancient and most respectable in the country. The Students come from every part of the country and generally number upwards of four hundred.
-Ezra Holden, Views of Philadelphia and Its Vicinity, 1838
Notes:
John Caspar Wild (1804-1846)
Swiss-born and Paris-trained artist, John Caspar Wild moved to Philadelphia in 1832. He travelled around the city, creating watercolors of newly built and impressive buildings, using them as the basis for lithographic prints, which could be reproduced in great numbers. With his partner J. B. Chevalier he issued a series of 20 prints, released in monthly parts in 1938 as Views of Philadelphia and Its Vicinity.
Wild's prints were originally issued in parts - four prints each month for the first five months of 1838. The 20 plates were followed by the four panoramas from the State House steeple. This was followed by the second edition (still in 1838), which consisted of all 20 plates in one bound volume. "Poetical illustrations" of each image were written by Ezra Holden and Andrew McMakin, the proprietors of the Saturday Courier. Holden wrote the prose and McMakin wrote the poetry.
Not long after the Views of Philadelphia was published, Wild moved west to St. Louis and turned his focus to that city and the Mississippi Valley. The copyright and lithographic stones to view his Views of Philadelphia were bought by J. T. Bowen, who published another edition in 1838 and a new edition of the work with hand-colored plates in 1848. Wild died in Davenport, Iowa at the young age of 42.
Notes:
Gift of Evan Randolph, 1960.
Transferred from the Rare Books Department 12/96.
Notes:
Hand-colored lithograph, published in Philadelphia by J.T. Bowen, 1840.
Geocode Latitude: Geocode Longitude:-75.155183
Geocode Latitude:39.951298
Creator Name: Wild, J. C. (John Caspar), approximately 1804-1846 - Lithographer
Bowen, John T., approximately 1801-1856? - Lithographer