Bird's-eye views of Alberta's land boom of the 1910s

Bird's-Eye Views of Alberta's cities and towns, including a 25-view appendix.


The Golden Age of Bird's-Eye Views and Viewmaking
Bird's-eye views of cities in the nineteenth-century were frequently employed as a form of popular art as well as a means of advertising. In Views and viewmakers of urban America, urban planning historian John W. Reps (1984), noted that, "Land speculators, townsite promotors, and civic leaders all used urban views to attract people and industry to their communities, often subsidizing the publication of the views to make wider distribution possible"(p. 4). Of the hundreds of printed views of the United States and Canada documented by Reps in his book, virtually all were created using the medium of lithography. Using this process, lithographers transformed an artist's drawing into an attractive printed image with sharp lines and precise, crisp details.
Lithographic viewmaking enjoyed its golden age in the U.S. during the twenty-five year period from 1866 to 1891 but its popularity gradually petered out by the early 1900s. There wasn't a single reason that led to the demise of viewmaking and perhaps it simply went out of style as tastes in popular art changed. A likely contributing factor was that the views published in the early twentieth-century using "improved" methods of printing (e.g., halftone screens) were much less attractive as prints than those produced using the lithographic press.

Bird's-Eye Views and Historical Research
An artistic bird's eye view portrays a city as if seen from an imaginary viewpoint high up in the air and shows how a geographic location would have looked at a particular point in time. The usual process followed by an artist to create one is described by Reps (1984) in this way: "The artist, meanwhile, was busy with the arduous task of sketching every building in town. Although he may have used whatever elevated viewpoints existed, in most cases the artist walked the streets and recorded what he saw in his sketchbook. From a town map or, if the place had been platted in the usual checkerboard pattern, from his own simple measurements and observations, the artist constructed a perspective grid showing the town's streets. On this he re-drew the buildings from his sketches, taking care to make each one the correct size. From this rough sketch of the entire town the artist then produced a more finished and attractive drawing" (p. 10).
City street patterns, significant buildings, and topographic features and are often readily identifiable in bird's-eye views. In some locales, these maps can be the only available option for obtaining such details. It is for these reasons that scholars have "…rediscovered these views as sources for research in the history of architecture, city planning, transportation, urban geography, printing technology, and other fields" (Reps, 1984, p. 16).

Bird's-Eye Views of Alberta's Towns and Cities
In 1976, the Public Archives of Canada held an exhibition entitled Bird's-Eye Views of Canadian Cities: An Exhibition of Panoramic Maps (1865Maps ( -1905. No views from either Alberta or Saskatchewan appeared in this display of 78 maps from 75 different cites (Fox, 1977). recently, in her chapter

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More recently, in her chapter on bird's-eye view maps, Eva Dodsworth (2018) identified a total of three photolithographic-style views of Alberta as found in the online collections of the Library of Congress, Library and Archives Canada, and various university library holdings. Perhaps due to Alberta's relatively young age, 1 its widely dispersed population and distant location on Canada's western frontier relatively few "classic" lithographic views were produced that pictured Alberta cities and towns.
Since bird's-eye views are easily understandable, they were frequently employed by real estate developers to assist people in the identification of land locations. If used for such promotional purposes, a view would typically include other embellishments hinting at future prosperity (e.g., new subdivisions, bridges, anticipated railways, streetcar lines, and belching smokestacks) to entice prospective buyers. Despite there being few bird's-eye views of Alberta produced as lithographs, there are plenty of examples of views created in the 1910s for use in advertising. Production of these views coincided with the explosive population growth in the Prairie Provinces that took place as settlers flooded into Canada's west. Land developers, real estate promoters and city boosters realized that these new immigrants would spur demand for land in Alberta's towns and cities.

Alberta's Real Estate Advertisers and Artist Entrepreneurs
Fred C. Lowes was Calgary's most successful land promoter of the early 1910s and was known to spare no expense when it came to

Cover of What sunny Alberta is like: A bird's-eye view of Calgary (1911) by H. M. Burton.
Courtesy of University of Calgary Archives and Special Collections. Image considered to be in the public domain.
advertising his properties for sale (Foran, 1989). He and several of his realtor contemporaries employed the services of artists to produce illustrations and bird's-eye view maps to be incorporated into print advertisements. These views most frequently appeared within newspaper ads but were also reproduced on handbills, city promotional booklets and souvenir postcards. Harry Marriott (H. M.) Burton (1882-1979) and Gibson Catlett (1866-1935 were two of the artists who painted 2 many of the bird's-eye views of Alberta done during the land boom. Burton was a trained British artist and illustrator who lived in Calgary from 1910 to about 1912. Gibson Catlett was a self-taught American artist and advertising man who specialized in the production of city views for real estate sales. He arrived in Calgary in 1911 and set up his studio which employed trained artists to assist him in the production of these works (Stevens, 2018

Alberta's Promotional Bird's-Eye Views
The twenty-five views of Alberta's cities and towns that appear in Appendix A. were all created between 1910 and 1915 and represent the best examples of this type of work. A majority of them picture Calgary and region which may have been because the province's two most prolific bird's-eye view artists were based in the city during this time. This northward view of the City of Calgary was one of several that appeared in a promotional booklet published in 1911 extolling the virtues of Calgary and its new Tuxedo Park subdivision. Tuxedo Park was owned by the Canadian Estates Co. and its location is clearly identified north of the Bow River along with the La Grange, Highland Park and North Balmoral developments. Few other features are identified apart from the Canadian Northern Railway and the Exhibition Grounds. The visible landscape surrounding the city has been enhanced to make the overall view more attractive. The artist is unknown but the style of this view resembles those in advertisements 2 created by H. M. Burton. In 1911 a "souvenir book" containing more than three hundred photographs of Calgary was produced by the Jennings Publishing Company to "…truthfully represent the City of Calgary, and show what the city really has to offer the homeseeker, investor, merchant and manufacturer." Included was the above view produced by American "topographic artist" Calgary realtors A. O. Jennings and E. J. Foster offered this postcard showing a view of the proposed Lake View Park to anyone visiting their properties for sale in Lake View Heights. This subdivision appears to have been a district registered and approved by the city but never developed. Lake View Heights was to be located three miles northeast from Calgary's post office. A Calgary Herald newspaper advertisement for Bassano Heights in Bassano, Alberta appeared in 1912 and contained this view by artists Burton and Gove. 9 Alberta real estate developers would promote real estate sales even in smaller towns if the land happened to be advantageously located close to major railway lines. Bassano's proximity to the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway between Calgary and Medicine Hat and its soon-to-be-built "Horse Shoe Bend" dam were prominently mentioned in the text of the advertisement. Interestingly, the ad's promotional slogan "best in the west by a dam site" remains in use today by the Bassano town office. This view of Hutton, Alberta drawn by H. M. Burton was included in the 1911 "souvenir book" produced by the Jennings Publishing Company to promote the City of Calgary. Hutton's location close to the C.P.R. Irrigation Block, Red Deer River and local coal mines hint at the region's enormous agricultural and industrial potential. The advertisement accompanying the view stated that Hutton was 85 miles due east of Calgary and close to a route surveyed by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. This view of central Edmonton comes from the cover of a promotional "souvenir booklet" of printed photographs of the city published in 1913. The statement "Things that were and things that are" seems to refer to the contrast between newer structures (e.g., High Level Bridge, Alberta Legislature Building) and those that were already quite old (e.g., the Hudson's Bay Co. Fort which shared the grounds of the Legislature until it was torn down entirely in 1915 A large colour fold-out map was included within the pamphlet entitled Resorts in the Canadian Rockies used to advertise C.P.R.-owned railways and hotels in about 1915. The map shows a panoramic bird's-eye view of the southern half of Alberta and British Columbia from Victoria, B.C. to Calgary, Alberta. C.P.R. and steamship lines are displayed prominently.