Scull, N. and Heap, G. "An East Prospect of the City of Philadelphia..."

Nicholas Scull and George Heap.  "An East Prospect of the City of Philadelphia; taken by George Heap from the Jersey Shore, under the Direction of Nicholas Scull Surveyor General of the Province of Pennsylvania."A/A

[1756]-1768. Second state. 20th century restrike from the original plate. 28 1/2 x 46 1/4 (frame). Hand colored. 

This 20th century restrike of the 1756 printing of George Heap’s “East Prospect” is known as “the contracted” version (see Snyder, City of Independence, pp. 45-47).  The 1754 version was so big that it was printed on four separate sheets, and more important, people objected to the large size as unmanageable.  This smaller version added scenery on the New Jersey shore because Philadelphians wanted to project the image of an inland port.  This printing is a second state because the name of Nicholas Scull is corrected from the first state which spelled his name “Skull” and most likely dates from the 1760s.  The same desire influenced providing a plan of the city showing both sides of the river as well as the battery and the most important and prestigious building, the Statehouse.  Snyder states that 300 copies of the print were produced in total and that additional copies would have been printed for Thomas Jeffery’s General Topography of North America and the West Indies (London, 1768), which was a large composite atlas which is now quite scarce.  A fine and very rare artifact of colonial Philadelphia