Réprésentation du feu terrible à nouvelle Yorck, que les Américains allumé pendant la nuit du 19. septembre 1776 (Representation of the terrible fire at New York, that the Americans lit during the night of September 19, 1776)
Engraver Anonymous, French, 18th century French
After Franz Xavier Habermann German
Publisher Basset French
Not on view
Five days after British troops commanded by General William Howe landed in Manhattan, a great fire destroyed much of southwest Manhattan. At the time, many assumed that American Revolutionary sympathizers had started the blaze, but its precise cause remains unknown. Flames here engulf large, elegant buildings along a street that may be Broadway, as skirmishes take place and figures flee. Known as a Vue d’Optique, this print was published in Paris and based on a design created in Augsburg. Sold across Europe, such prints were known as Perspective Prints, or Vues d'optique in French, and Guckkastenbilder or Perspektivansichten in German. They were intended to be viewed through an optical device called a perspective glass or zograscope that contains a concave lens and a mirror that reversed the image and enhanced its three-dimensionality. Specially designed peepboxes were also made to contain them.
