SERIES: Views From A Trip Around The World
ILLUSTRATIONS: Westminster Abbey; View of London; Parliament; Tower of London
SIZE: 3" x 5"
DATE: 1891
LITHOGRAPHER: Joseph P. Knapp, N.Y.
CONDITION: Fair to good, I'd say. This card is moderately soiled with clearly worn edges and corners. It also has several small creases and a 1/2" closed tear in the top edge, just left of center. (Please see scans.)
MULTIPLE ITEM SHIPPING DISCOUNT: I will ship up to 4 cards for the single base shipping charge shown. For purchases of more than 4 cards, the shipping charge will increase by just a small increment for every 4 additional cards.
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REVERSE TEXT: LONDON, ENGLAND.
The site of this commanding city was anciently a trading place between the Britons and their Gallic neighbors. At the close of the stormy periods of vicissitude, begun with the Roman conquest and ended with the Norman retreat, it became the Capital of the Kingdom. The original city is of moderate extent, probably included within the old Roman walls. The rapid accumulation of dwellings now constituting the metropolis, is shown by the fact that maps of the Elizabethan date give fields and open country north and west of the Strand, and on the south bank of the river. The dwellings of the nobility were then principally on the Strand--these localities being still preserved in the names of streets leading toward the river, such as Arundel, and Surrey.
Waterloo Bridge, with its grandeur of form and massive solidity, suggestive of Roman dignity, is a most impressive sight to a stranger. Prior to Westminister Bridge, commenced in 1739, London Bridge was the only fixed connection between the north and south banks of the Thames. The change in the city's streets and buildings compelled by the ravages of the great fire in 1666, and lesser ones since that date, have wrought their present solid and permanent character. At the commencement of the present century the squares of which the British Museum is the nucleus were not in existence. Westminister Abbey, the noted shrine of the ashes of England's illustrious dead, is on the site of a church built by Sebert, King of the East Saxons (or Essex) in the seventh century. After several demolishings and reconstructions, it assumed its present outline under Henry III, and was further developed until the erection of the superb Chapel of Henry VII, and the western towers by Sir Christopher Wren, also the architect of St. Paul's. St. Paul's is, without exception, the grandest building of its kind in the kingdom. The height of the dome to the top of the cross is 404 feet. The Houses of Parliament are in the new Palace at Westminister, where stands the famous Victoria Tower.
Population 1890, 4,421,661.
