Catalog Archive
Auction 136, Lot 305

"Boston Harbor, Massachusetts From a Trigonometrical Survey…", U.S. Coast Survey

Subject: Boston, Massachusetts

Period: 1872 (dated)

Publication:

Color: Black & White

Size:
35.5 x 28 inches
90.2 x 71.1 cm
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The Office of Coast Survey is the oldest U.S. scientific organization, dating from 1807 when Congress directed that a "survey of the coast" be carried out. By 1836, it was called the U.S. Coast Survey and in 1878, the name was changed to the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Today the Office of Coast Survey is a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA.

The survey teams, composed of civilians as well as Army and Naval officers, charted the nation's waterways and produced a wide array of reports, survey charts, hydrographic studies of tides and currents, astronomical studies and observations, and coastal pilots. These charts are an important record of the changing nature of the nation's coastlines. In additional to coastal charts, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey produced land sketches, Civil War battle maps, and the early aeronautical charts.

This is one of the finest charts produced by the Coast Survey, fully and beautifully engraved with as much detail on land as along the coastline. The chart is filled with hundreds of soundings, anchorages, hazards, bottom type, and tables of buoys, light houses, and tides. The inland detail includes roads, houses, fields, villages and railroads. Three sea view elevations show the land from various approaches. This is the revised edition from the 1867 chart.

References:

Condition: C

Folded as issued with toning at the folds and separation across the majority of the upper fold that can easily be repaired.

Estimate: $150 - $200

Sold for: $110

Closed on 6/1/2011

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