Doug Grant Looking east from St. Paul St.
This is a portion of Brockville’s most important historical map. There is so much to see in this map that readers may forgive me if I don’t try to identify many of the details. There were hundreds of these bird’seye view maps created by talented sketch artists, who travelled from city to city in the United States and Canada. By walking along the streets with sketch book in hand, each artist created a wealth of material to take back to their publishing headquarters. In Brockville’s case, the name of the artist, Herman Brosius, was printed on the edge of the lithographic copy of his drawing. It was published by Charles Shober of the CHICAGO LITHOGRAPHIC CO. of Chicago, Illinois in 1874. Many people these days have wondered how such a detailed and accurate map could be produced in the age before © copyright -
aeroplanes and satellites. Researchers have published articles showing typical sketch books full of amazing drawings, done by hand and visualizing a point-of-view high above each street. Returning to Chicago in 1873, Brosius would have created this bird’s-eye view map and turned it over to a skilled engraver working for the Chicago company. Herman Brosius (1851-1917) is known to have authored at least fifty-seven bird’s-eye view maps between 1871 and 1895. I have seen two similar maps, created for Kingston and Ottawa during the same period. This is just the central portion of the Brockville map. In my experience it is very accurate and can be relied on for what buildings were in existence then, and how they looked. 2009
These articles can now be found online in the Web Site: The Doug Grant Building -doug-grant.weebly.com