A Bird's Eye View into the Past

Glasgow

In the 1860s, The Illustrated London News published a series of bird’s-eye panoramic maps of famous cities. These maps were created by architectural draftsman Thomas Sulman with the help of engraver Robert Loudan. Legend has it that Sulman used hot air balloons to capture his aerial perspectives of these prominent urban centers.

The Glasgow City Heritage Trust has created an impressive interactive map of Sulman’s 1864 Bird’s Eye View of Glasgow. Their Gallus Glasgow presentation allows users to explore this aerial depiction of mid-19th-century Glasgow and compare it with a panoramic bird’s-eye view of the city as captured at the beginning of the 21st century.

This interactive version of the historical map includes several optional overlays. These feature markers indicating the locations of buildings that have survived since the map’s creation, structures that have been lost over time, and an option to display Glasgow’s street names superimposed on Sulman’s map. The map even incorporates a series of videos that dive into the details, offering a more immersive, first-person perspective of life in 19th-century Glasgow.

New York

You can view Sulman's 1876 bird's eye view of New York, New York From Bergen Hill, on the Library of Congress website. This panoramic view of New York was published as an extra supplement to the Illustrated London News on August 18, 1876. The Library of Congress copy of the map is a little poor in quality. A higher resolution copy can be viewed on Digital Commonwealth.

London

The Charles Dickens Page allows you to view a number of bird's eye views of London neighborhoods, as captured by Thomas Sulman in the 1880's. These maps were originally published in 1886, in a London guidebook by Herbert Fry.

The maps on the Charles Dickens page include some interactive place-name labels, which can be clicked on to learn more about the most important buildings and streets displayed. Some of the maps have also been digitally altered to enhance certain features and to 'align the images with Dickens' lifetime'.