BANK OF THE UNITED STATES, in Third Street PHILADELPHIA
Winterthur Museum
|
Print Title: BANK OF THE UNITED STATES, in Third Street PHILADELPHIA Description:
Colored etching and engraving inscribed bottom left "Drawn Engraved & Published by William Birch & Son" inscribed bottom right "Sold by R. Campbell & Co No. 130 Chestnut Street Philada. 1799"
The scene depicts Bank of the United States, created by Congress in 1791 built on 3rd street Philadelphia in 1797. The building, after designs by Samuel Blodgett, Jr., was intended to be of a marble construction, but to economize brick was used on the rear and sides. Claudius F. Le Grande, a French sculptor working in Philadelphia carved the mahogany eagle in the pediment over the door and other architectural features. After the United States Congress failed to renew the bank’s charter in 1811 the building was sold to Stephen Girard, a merchant, banker and philanthropist, who operated his own banking business there for the next twenty years. Despite the fact that Joseph Stubbs used this scene to decorate pottery in the 1820s, he does not use Girard’s Bank as the name for his scene. A Romantic-style transfer print entitled “Stephen Girard’s Bank was produced used by the potters Job & John Jackson in the early 1830s. The slightly different scene was adapted from an engraving in John H. Hinton The History and Topography of the United States of North America, published in London by Jennings & Chaplin & J.T. Hinton, 1830-32.
Print Source:
The print is Plate 17 in The city of Philadelphia … published by William Russell Birch, Dec. 31, 1800. Reprinted by William Russell Birch and W. Barker 1804. More on this source print
View all source prints »
|
