The Frick Art & Historical Center is exhibiting a historic print of Pittsburgh through Sept. 20 in The Frick Art Museum rotunda. “Bird’s Eye View of Pittsburgh, Allegheny & Environs,” a four-sheet tinted lithograph by James T. Palmatary, is a detailed rendering of the city in 1859. 

In the 1850s, Mr. Palmatary earned a reputation for articulated city views that showed individual businesses and other landmarks so precisely that they could be picked out by viewers. These projects were funded by print subscriptions that he sold, a fairly common practice then.

The newspaper announcement for his Pittsburgh print, which measures 43 by 85 inches, promised the depiction of “every street, square and lane in the two cities and boroughs, with a correct and lifelike drawing of every public building, store, manufactory and private dwelling.”

A reporter for the Daily Pittsburgh Gazette who saw sketches for three of the four sheets wrote “… if you have Palmatary’s view of Pittsburgh before you, you are on Mt. Washington, you have telescopic eyes, the smoke is all gone, the Allegheny unrolls itself to the North, the Monongahela sweeps away South and East, the Ohio sparkles at your feet….”

The Hillman Co., the work’s lender, purchased the print at the New York winter antique show. It is the better of two known surviving copies. The other, in the collection of the Duquesne Club, was included in the exhibition “A Panorama of Pittsburgh: Nineteenth-Century Printed Views,” which was organized by The Frick in 2008 on the occasion of  Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary.

The museum is at 7227 Reynolds St., Point Breeze. Hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Admission and parking are free. Information:412-371-0600 or www.TheFrickPittsburgh.org.

Post-Gazette art critic Mary Thomas: mthomas@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1925.

First Published: August 20, 2015, 2:34 p.m.