Destruction of San Francisco by Earthquake and Fire old NOLA print Cathedral of Commerce Through the

Cathedral of Commerce Through the Archway of Power frames the Woolworth Building's Gothic spire through the muscular stone arch of the Manhattan Municipal Building — a 1910s tableau in which civic authority and mercantile ambition stare each other down across Park Row

Bombardment of Island Number Ten on the Mississippi - Vintage Maritime Print renders that long April siege of 1862 in full chromolithographic thunder — Foote's ironclads and mortar rafts wreathed in cannon smoke as the Confederate stronghold in the river's great horseshoe bend buckles under Union fire

The draftsman's lines trace not just a structure but a descent

half a century after his death

and rooftops drawn with the cool civic pride of a city watching another country's war from across the river

Destruction of San Francisco by Earthquake and Fire old NOLA print Cathedral of Commerce Through theDestruction of San Francisco by Earthquake and Fire a documentary view of the April 1906 catastrophe, when a city built on gold rush bravado buckled along the fault line and then surrendered the rest of itself to three days of fire. The image carries the strange hush of a metropolis reduced to grid and ash. About the Source Bella Frye sources artifacts from the great American historical archive the Library of Congress, the National Archives, regional