1888 real snapshots of the giveaway panoramic view of Melbourne

UNTIL 22 AUGUST YOU CAN SEE Cabinets of Wonder exhibition, 12 July–22 Aug 2016 at RHSV, 239 A’Beckett St Melbourne. All welcome. Bring your friends. Entry is by gold coin donation. We reprint the exhibition guide for GJ (there are more than 40 entries. If you want a copy please send payment of $10 to the Ephemera Society of Australia Inc c/- 6 Duke St Richmond 3121 – for costs including postage and handling.)

Exhibit: EPHEMERA FROM 1888 Collector: PW Occupation: marketing executive ESA Member: 29 years *1888– the year of the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition.

PW: This is bird’s eye view of Melbourne in 1888 was a giveaway at the Centennial
Exhibition. The other side had advertising printed on it. It was likely to have been folded
when it was distributed to the public.
This printed view has not been folded; it is in marvellous condition. It is a framed copy kept
by Mr McDougall in his office because he was so proud of the quality of the printing.
Mr McDougall was one of the partners of printers’ Sands & McDougall fame. 

There is wonderful detail, for example look at the Yarra turning circle in the lower left foreground.

Panoramic maps

The panoramic map was a popular cartographic form used to depict cities and towns during
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Known also as bird’s-eye views,
perspective maps, and aero views, panoramic maps are nonphotographic representations of
cities portrayed as if viewed from above at an oblique angle. Although not generally drawn
to scale, they show street patterns, individual buildings, and major landscape features in
perspective’.
Library of Congress, Panoramic Maps Collection

The views were often commissioned by land speculators, local businesses, civic
organizations, and individual citizens, these renderings fostered both civic pride and local
commerce. The use of color lithography, a recent invention enhanced the resulting map.