Advertisement for Street Car and Omnibus made by John Stephenson of New York

Advertisement for Street Car and Omnibus made by John Stephenson of New York

John Durand III

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This page with advertisements was taken from the 1865 book 'Grant and his Generals', written by John Durand. It shows two illustrations of omnibuses, designed by the renowned New York street car maker John Stephenson, who was the inventor of the omnibus. The engraving is a historic record of an important discovery in the field of commercial transportation in the United States during the nineteenth century.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Advertisement for Street Car and Omnibus made by John Stephenson of New YorkAdvertisement for Street Car and Omnibus made by John Stephenson of New YorkAdvertisement for Street Car and Omnibus made by John Stephenson of New YorkAdvertisement for Street Car and Omnibus made by John Stephenson of New YorkAdvertisement for Street Car and Omnibus made by John Stephenson of New York

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.