Engraved wall map with hand-coloring in wash and outline, overall 1785 x 1595 mm sheet, with modern linen backing and selvage mounted on rollers, with inset maps of Chicago and Blue Island, inset diagram of the state of Illinois. (Mounted on new linen, a few tiny losses to edges, some minor staining as usual.)

FIRST EDITION, ONE OF THE EARLIEST MAPS OF COOK COUNTY, A PRE-FIRE RARITY.

"Walter Flower's enormously large map of Cook County...presents an historical snapshot of the Chicago area at the dawn of the Civil War that remains unparalleled in its richness of detail" (Robert Holland, Chicago in Maps, p.87). "This huge map of Cook County, with its inset of Chicago is the earliest for Cook County listed in Phillips and...is a most valuable record of Cook County and Chicago at just before the War of the Rebellion" (Streeter). Borders include advertisements from Chicago merchants, and the map includes plats of over thirty towns in Cook County. The map also includes large-scale pictures of numerous properties around Chicago and Cook County, including the Tremont House Hotel, the Washington House, Bryant Hall, Graceland and Rosehill Cemeteries, J. J. Sand's Columbian Brewery, the Cook County Courthouse, Oak Ridge School in Cicero, the residences of Thomas Cook and James W. Scoville, E. Haskin's House in Evanston, and Northwestern Female College in Evanston. Streeter III: 1513.