Destruction of San Francisco by Earthquake and Fire old NOLA print Columbia Presenting the Sword of

Columbia Presenting the Sword of Congress and Crowning Admiral George Dewey the Naval Hero of the Nineteenth Century 1899 — an allegorical chromolithograph in which the Republic herself

and rooftops drawn with the cool civic pride of a city watching another country's war from across the river

half a century after his death

Cathedral of Commerce Through the Archway of Power frames the Woolworth Building's Gothic spire through the muscular stone arch of the Manhattan Municipal Building — a 1910s tableau in which civic authority and mercantile ambition stare each other down across Park Row

The draftsman's lines trace not just a structure but a descent

Destruction of San Francisco by Earthquake and Fire old NOLA print Columbia Presenting the Sword ofDestruction of San Francisco by Earthquake and Fire a documentary view of the April 1906 catastrophe, when a city built on gold rush bravado buckled along the fault line and then surrendered the rest of itself to three days of fire. The image carries the strange hush of a metropolis reduced to grid and ash. About the Source Bella Frye sources artifacts from the great American historical archive the Library of Congress, the National Archives, regional