[Poster] Bird's Eye View of the Williamsburg Brooklyn Waterfront on New York Bay, as it might have been in the nineteenth century, with its Harbor, all the way east to and past Second Street. Williamsburg street names are superimposed in large block letters

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Scarce Williamsburg Brooklyn poster -- we could locate no other copies of this nostalgic Brooklyn poster anywhere, from when the Williamsburg waterfront was lined with piers which jutted out into the East River at a diagonal, much as the remaining piers of Brooklyn to the south of this neighborhood still do. One could think the poster was intended as a novelty sign for the subway, since with its place names arranged so it is clearly modeled after a subway signage occasionally used in recent times, but we could find no such sign among recorded subway posters, and two of the names of the dozen given are not subway stops at all, but rather bus stops and streets in Brooklyn. In any case, all the place names are well-known streets that run, at least in part, in Williamsburg. Also, none of the subway signs upon which this might be based have the cityscape as a backdrop! The poster is depicting a long gone, semi-imagined Williarmsburg, circa 1870, with clipper ships and other sail craft and steam ferries in the East River. We would add that we believe that the cityscape is not strictly-speaking historical, or capturing an actual moment of the past, as there are anachronisms whatever date one chooses for the picture. For example, some of the buildings are taller than anything around in 1870, but by 1890, the clipper ship was mostly if not entirely a ship from the past. There is also no indication of the Williamsburg Bridge, whose construction began in 1896, completed in 1903, and that certainly would mark the latest possible date for this dreamscape. We can only hazard a guess as to when exactly the poster was created; nonetheless, we would say it is late 20th century, say 1990. The poster is tall and narrow, measuring 102 by 33 cm, and if we count only the pictorial part of the poster, it is a meter tall, or slightly more than a yard tall. The backdrop is clearly based on a drawing, and to our eye, this resembles a chalk drawing on a blackboard, with the chalk being a fine enough point to allow for intricate detail. That said, the actual buildings, including the dock structures, the piers, the ships are somewhat simplified in a manner that suggests realism but upon closer examination, have a generic quality, or are somewhat generalized. The drawing, in other words, is not based on a photograph, as what is represented is definitely not how the waterfront ever actually looked like. One of the charms of the poster is how this drawing has a certain reserve about it. If one gives the poster a quick gaze or looks at it from a distance, the cityscape doesn't jump out, but rather, it reveals itself once one scrutinizes it more closely. The map does identify street names and of especial interest, it gives the name of the Phila. & Reading Iron & Coal Co. on two of the piers. The place names, all in white block letters of varying height and thickness, are Lorimer, Kent, Manhattan, Graham, Union, Bedford, Grand, Meserole, Roebling, Marcy, Metropolitan, Montrose. The poster is pasted onto a white foam board which gives it a sturdiness.

N° de réf. du vendeur 008021

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: [Poster] Bird's Eye View of the Williamsburg Brooklyn Waterfront on New York Bay, as it might have been in the nineteenth century, with its Harbor, all the way east to and past Second Street. Williamsburg street names are superimposed in large block letters
• Reliure: NA
• État de l'article: Fine
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • New York City
  • Posters