New York from Heights Near Brooklyn [The Wall View from Brooklyn]

John Hill|William Guy Wall

1823 · Hand-colored etching and aquatint · Drawings and Prints

Hill’s expansive aquatint shows how undeveloped the Brooklyn side of the East River, opposite Manhattan, remained well into the nineteenth century. To sketch this view, the Irish watercolorist Wall stood near the present-day junction of Court Street and First Place, on a hill later leveled. The foreground pond served Cornell’s Mill and the windmill at right belonged to Pierrepont’s Gin Distillery. Hill, who worked in London before moving to Philadelphia in 1816, then New York in 1822, used his skills as an aquatint engraver to produce a series of prints that document New York’s appearance from the water.

Artist

John Hill|William Guy Wall

Date

1823

Medium

Hand-colored etching and aquatint

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of William H. Huntington, 1883