BIRCH, William R. (1755-1834); Thomas BIRCH (1779-1851)

Library and Surgeons Hall, in Fifth Street Philadelphia

Pennsylvania: W. Birch, Springland Cot, near Neshaminy Bridge on the Bristol Road, 1799. Hand-coloured copper engraving on laid paper. Sheet size: 13 7/8 x 16 7/8 inches.

Plate 19 from the very rare first American colour-plate book, with views that are "uniquely valuable among American historical prints" (Martin Snyder).

The view looks along Fifth Street above Walnut Street, with the red brick Library Hall dominating the left side of the composition. Founded by Benjamin Franklin and others in 1731, the Library Company of Philadelphia became one of the central institutions of learned life in the early republic. Its Fifth Street home, built in 1789 to 1790 from designs by Dr. William Thornton, stood until 1884. Birch gives the building civic weight through its Palladian front, balustraded roofline, and the statue of Franklin placed in the niche above the entrance. Beyond the library appears Surgeons Hall, identifiable by the lantern on its roof. The building served the University of Pennsylvania's medical school in the period when Philadelphia remained a leading center of American medical instruction; Penn records its Fifth Street anatomical theatre as the nation's first building used exclusively for medical teaching. The scene is also valuable for its small details of urban life. Birch includes patrons at the library steps, pedestrians in the street, a horse-drawn cart, figures gathered along the pavement, and neighbouring workshops and houses. These details place two major institutions within the working texture of the city, making the print both an architectural document and a social view of Philadelphia in the last years of its decade as the national capital. This plate is taken from the first and one of the most important of all American color plate books, the first book to be entirely produced and published in the United States. William Russell Birch, who conceived this splendid celebration of the city of Philadelphia, then the largest city in the United States, was a native of England. When he arrived in America in 1794, he brought with him a strong academic training in art which he used to found an engraving firm. Birch hoped that his carefully planned and executed portfolio would serve as an advertisement "by which an idea of the improvements of the country could be conveyed to Europe, to promote and encourage settlers to the establishment of trade and commerce."

Martin P. Snyder, "William Birch: His Philadelphia Views," in Pennsylvania Magazine of History, Vol. 73, No. 3, July 1949 (Snyder 19a).

Item #42951

Price: $2,200.00