New York from the Steeple of St. Paul's Church, Looking East, South, and West

New York from the Steeple of St. Paul's Church, Looking East, South, and West

Henry A. Papprill

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This panorama captures a bustling lower Manhattan in 1849. Taken from the tower of St. Paul’s Chapel on Broadway, just below City Hall Park, the view includes P. T. Barnum’s famous museum at lower left, which stood at the junction of Broadway, Park Row and Ann Street from 1841 to 1865. Horse-drawn omnibuses and pedestrians crowd the street below and a rooftop sign at right identifies Mathew Brady's Daguerrean Miniature Gallery, where New Yorkers had their photographs taken. Above the projecting roof, Fulton Street recedes towards the East River and, at right, Broadway moves south past the towered Main Post Office facing Nassau Street; Trinity Church at Wall Street; its spire, completed in 1846, would remain the city’s tallest structure until 1890.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York from the Steeple of St. Paul's Church, Looking East, South, and WestNew York from the Steeple of St. Paul's Church, Looking East, South, and WestNew York from the Steeple of St. Paul's Church, Looking East, South, and WestNew York from the Steeple of St. Paul's Church, Looking East, South, and WestNew York from the Steeple of St. Paul's Church, Looking East, South, and West

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.