View from My Work Room Window in Hammond Street, New York City

John Hill

ca. 1826–30 · Watercolor, pen and black ink, and graphite on off-white wove paper · The American Wing

This is the only independent drawing known by John Hill, the British-born engraver of many early Philadelphia and New York topographical views, including the famed “Hudson River Portfolio” (1821–25). Executed on the reverse of one of his own aquatint engravings of City Hall, the view here offers the prospect “uptown” from what is now Eleventh Street in Greenwich Village. It could not be a more prosaic contrast to that stately and still extant municipal edifice, completed in 1812, on the verso. Hill’s carefully plotted linear perspective, conspicuous in the planks of the house at left, and his obliging notation of the fences separating properties already project the city’s relentless march north to the rural climes of upper Manhattan Island.

Artist

John Hill

Date

ca. 1826–30

Medium

Watercolor, pen and black ink, and graphite on off-white wove paper

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

The Edward W. C. Arnold Collection of New York Prints, Maps, and Pictures, Bequest of Edward W. C. Arnold, 1954