PERSPECTIVE MAP OF THE CITY OF LAREDO, TEXAS. THE GATEWAY TO AND FROM MEXICO.

A stunning bird's-eye view of the Texas border town of Laredo, produced in the early 1890s as a promotional piece by the Laredo Real Estate & Abstract Company. This energetic cityscape is the earliest bird's-eye view of the city, and shows a bustling and thriving community, with a dense grid of houses and businesses, a railroad line to the west of the town, and several coal refineries billowing black smoke from high stacks. To the south of Laredo is a portion of the northern Mexico city of Nuevo Laredo, located in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The two cities are prominently split in the lower third of the view by the spectacular Rio Grande River, with a railroad bridge and "electric motor" street bridge connecting the two cities. Vignettes along the lower portion of the sheet show prominent Laredo buildings, including City Hall, Webb County Court House, the Hotel Hamilton, the Laredo Improvement Company, and the Masonic Hall. The text at bottom enumerates fifteen "Facts about Laredo," comparative distances between Chicago and New Orleans, population, and import & export statistics from 1888 to January 1890. "Directly west of Corpus Christi, once-somnolent Laredo on the Rio Grande had awakened to the quickening step of urbanization. The view produced in Figure 18.15 [the present view] shows the city about 1890, greatly expanded from the tiny plaza settlement of the eighteenth century. If one is to judge from the gigantic net of projected streets extending to the horizon, its residents and land developers anticipated an even greater period of growth in the years ahead. Laredo consisted of more than empty streets and hopes, however. Railroad service, which began in 1882 and was subsequently extended, provided Laredo many of the advantages with respect to trade with Mexico enjoyed by El Paso. By the time this view was published, a new bridge had replaced the more picturesque but less efficient ferry across the river to the Mexican town bearing the same name. Tanneries, brick manufacturing plants, lumber yards and furniture shops, a woolen mill, Fort McIntosh, and the complex of activities associated with railroad maintenance and repair, all provided employment for Laredo's increasing population, which had jumped from 3,521 in 1880 to 11,319 a decade later" - Reps, CITIES OF THE AMERICAN WEST, p.614. Henry Wellge, the German-born artist who executed this view, settled in Milwaukee in 1878. Reps holds Wellge in high regard, writing that he "ranks with the most prolific of the city view artists of America." In the present view, Wellge documented Laredo's expansion from the southeast, especially in terms of downtown buildings such as the new Webb County Courthouse and the combination city hall and market house. Most of the structures in the city were modest one-story buildings, but the new prosperity had spurred a building boom. This growth was reflected in increased property values, scarce hotel rooms, and high demand for building materials, such as lumber and bricks. The arrival of the railroads also provided a market for the local coal, found near the upriver village of Minera, which had been known for decades but now could be profitably mined. As Wellge showed, miners floated the coal down the river on barges when possible, but developers built the Rio Grande and Pecos Railway in 1882-83 to link the mines with the city. When the RG&P collapsed, the Rio Grande and Eagle Pass Railway took it over. Wellge suggested the location of the mines on the horizon, in the upper left-hand corner of the print (a distance of some twenty-five miles). The community itself had also undergone dramatic change in the decade since the railroads arrived. Steamboat traffic on the Rio Grande had begun to diminish as irrigation took so much water from the river that boats often ran aground. The railroads were more reliable, bringing thousands of newcomers into the community. Laredo remained a predominantly Mexican city, but the arrival of large numbers.…