To the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, Common Council and Freemen of Philadelphia this plan of the improved part of the city, surveyed and laid down by the late Nicholas Scull, Esqr., Surveyor General of the Province of Pennsylvania, is humbly inscrib'd by the editors., Philadelphia: Sold by the editors, Matthew Clarkson and Mary Biddle, 1762. Measurements: 48.5 x 66 cm (19 1/8 x 26 cm) [sight]

PROVENANCE
Collection of Jacob Gamble, Philadelphia
thence by descent in the family (according to a handwritten note dated June 8, 1931, affixed to the backing)

LITERATURE
M.P. Snyder, City of Independence: Views of Philadelphia Before 1800, (1975), pp. 62 ff.
S. Bedini, The Scull Dynasty of Pennsylvania Surveyors, in Professional Surveyor Magazine (May 2001)

LOT NOTES
A very rare map and important historical document in its own right, the last time a similar map was offered at public auction was at Sotheby's auction of Fine Books and Manuscripts on June 11, 2013, with an estimate of $100,000-150,000. As Martin P. Snyder notes about this map in City of Independence, this map was the first detailed map of the interior of Philadelphia. It was the first map to identify all the streets and alleys of Philadelphia, and the exact locations of important institutions of the time. The cataloguing for the Sotheby's lot notes that they located only five copies in public institutions: Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (2 of which one is defective); Philadelphia, Library Company; New York Public Library, Stokes Collection; Washington D.C., Library of Congress.