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Plan of Lands End, Rockport, Mass.
Boston: A. Spalding Weld; Heliotype Printing Co., 1889. Lithograph, 46 x 52 cm, plus margins. A real estate map promoting property at Lands End in Rockport, Massachusetts, a popular seaside summer community for Bostoners. Beginning as a village on Cape Ann, known for its rocky coast, fishing industries, quarries, coves, and granite production, Lands End was promoted as a summer community beginning in the 1880s. The map offered here depicts fifty numbered lots in three clusters, one of which lines the shore. Dimensions are provided for each. Also included are roads, extant buildings, beaches, coves, points, a casino and so on. A fine illustration of Turk’s Head Inn—identified near the center of the map—appears in the upper-right corner, showing the inn, horse-drawn carriages, and couples strolling about, and a vignette of Thatcher’s Island is incorporated into the title. An inset map of Cape Ann appears in the lower right corner, depicting the lands for sale (shaded dark gray), the nearby town of Rockport, and three islands off the Cape: Milk Island, Thatcher's Island, and Straitsmouth Island. A note appears along the lower border, reading: “Area of Lots from No. 21 upwards is from mean high tide to centre of adjacent roads and ways.” Interested parties are encouraged to apply to land agent A. Spalding Weld of Boston. Joseph Henry Curtis (1841–1928) was a Boston landscape architect, civil engineer, and an early summer resident of Mount Desert Island, Maine. Curtis undertook many projects in Maine—his most notable design being that of his own estate, Thuya Lodge, located in Northeast Harbor, Maine (whose gardens are still maintained and are accessible to the public). Along with William Doane and Harvard University president Charles Eliot, Curtis co-founded the Northeast Harbor summer colony in 1880. Curtis bought some forty acres of land on the Eastern bank of Northeast Harbor and constructed three homes there; upon his death his property was bequeathed to the Town of Mount Desert. WorldCat records two copies of this 1889 edition, as well as two copies of an 1890 edition. REFERENCES: Joseph Henry Curtis (1841–1928) at tclf.org CONDITION: Light wear, a few short tears at margins, old folds.
Item #5293
Price: $650.00