View from My Work Room Window in Hammond Street, New York City

View from My Work Room Window in Hammond Street, New York City

John Hill

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is the only independent drawing known by John Hill, the British-born engraver of many early Philadelphia and New York topographical views, including the famed “Hudson River Portfolio” (1821–25). Executed on the reverse of one of his own aquatint engravings of City Hall, the view here offers the prospect “uptown” from what is now Eleventh Street in Greenwich Village. It could not be a more prosaic contrast to that stately and still extant municipal edifice, completed in 1812, on the verso. Hill’s carefully plotted linear perspective, conspicuous in the planks of the house at left, and his obliging notation of the fences separating properties already project the city’s relentless march north to the rural climes of upper Manhattan Island.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

View from My Work Room Window in Hammond Street, New York CityView from My Work Room Window in Hammond Street, New York CityView from My Work Room Window in Hammond Street, New York CityView from My Work Room Window in Hammond Street, New York CityView from My Work Room Window in Hammond Street, New York City

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.