In addition to over 60,000 books and thousands of pamphlets (many rare or unique) the Athenaeum Library is rich in many non-book materials: maps, prints, manuscripts, autographs, watercolours, photographs and playbills.
In this note I will draw attention to an important example, which I hope will whet the appetite for discovery in the readers of this occasional library publication.
Ordnance Survey of Liverpool, 1848/9, 5ft to the mile
This impressive example of the map-maker’s art, allied to Victorian skills in lithographic printing, shows the area of the then town centre in a number of large sheets including, in many cases, the interiors of large public buildings and churches. The excerpt below locates the Athenaeum in its original setting in Church Street.
Reprinted from an article by
John Tiernan