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Category: City Histories

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

The Early Years of Alexandria, Virginia

Posted by: Ed Redmond

The city of Alexandria, Virginia traces its roots to the establishment of a tobacco inspection warehouse at the foot of current day Oronoco Street in Old Town Alexandria. The purpose of the inspection warehouse was to provide quality control over tobacco exported from the colonies to England. Instrumental to the early mapping of Alexandria was …

Lemberg. Created by German military, Berlin, 194-. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.

Lviv and the Janowski Concentration Camp

Posted by: Ryan Moore

The city of Lviv, in what is now western Ukraine, was greatly impacted by the Second World War and the Holocaust. Prior to the outbreak of fighting, it was part of Poland and known as Lwów. It was then a diverse, multi-ethnic city, and its inhabitants included large communities of Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, and others. …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Houses of Government

Posted by: Ed Redmond

225 years ago this month, on October 13, 1792, the cornerstone of what we now call the White House was laid. The term “White House,” although not its official name, was commonly used to refer to the President’s House or Executive Mansion. President Theodore Roosevelt formally adopted the term “White House” in 1901. So how …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Modest Monuments: The District of Columbia Boundary Stones

Posted by: Tim St. Onge

The oldest set of federally placed monuments in the United States are strewn along busy streets, hidden in dense forests, lying unassumingly in residential front yards and church parking lots. Many are fortified by small iron fences, and one resides in the sea wall of a Potomac River lighthouse. Lining the current and former boundaries …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Olympic City: Rio de Janeiro in Historical Maps

Posted by: Tim St. Onge

The 2016 Summer Olympics kicks off next week with over 10,000 athletes and many more tourists and attendees from around the world descending on the host city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Rio de Janeiro is a sprawling metropolis with a population of 6 million people, situated along the Atlantic Ocean. But like the saying …

A 1921 Japanese tourist map of Pyongyang, which they renamed Heijo. Library of Congress, Geography & Map Division.

North Korea’s Enigmatic Capital Pyongyang

Posted by: Ryan Moore

The North Korean capital city Pyongyang has both a storied and troubled history. Among the reasons it fascinates, plain curiosity rises to the top of list, because the North Korean government has largely closed off the country from the rest of world since the end of the Korean War in 1953. Correspondingly, accurate maps of …