Linda Todhunter 1884 Map of Key West

The Historic 1884 Bird's Eye View Map of Key West

By the last quarter of the 19th Century, Key West, Florida was a city to be reckoned with. It was the richest city per capita in the United States and furnished 95% of the revenue to the state of Florida. Cargo from around the world came through its port. Men became rich in the cigar business, the sponge business, and/or the wrecking industry - there were lots of ways to make good money in Key West. Women ran the involved social scene and brought up well-educated and genteel children. It was the perfect city for entrepreneurs with a proposition to come and make their pitch.

In the mid- to late-1800's, teams of artists and map makers toured the country, visiting large towns and small. Their gimmick? They'd draw a map of your town, a veritable "bird's eye view," and "freeze" your city in a moment of time for posterity. A presentation was made to city fathers and, if their reaction was positive and they were willing to pay for it, the team would go to work. Obviously, the leaders in Key West thought the idea was grand. (So did the city fathers of Cedar Key and DeLand - the two other Florida cities to get maps through J.J. Stoner that year.)

Leading the Key West team was publisher Joseph J. Stoner and his chief "view artist," Henry Wellge of Madison, Wisconsin. Wellge set the imaginary perspective high in the air and supervised the other artists who literally went door to door drawing what they saw. The final product was printed by the Milwaukee lithography firm of Beck & Pauli. And the result in 1884, when no one had ever seen Key West from this angle, was breathtaking.

Close up, the map is even more wondrous - there's a "key" with corresponding numbers for places of interest - from Fort Taylor in the West to the Salt Ponds in the East. It beautifully depicts a very busy port city with ships stretching from the Fort all the way around the bottom of the map to the Bight and others underway on the Atlantic. It's a Key West as yet untouched by landfill and railroads. But physically the map shows its age of a hundred-and-twenty-five years - there are faded areas, smudges and little tears. Serendipitously, enter Linda Todhunter.

Linda Todhunter, Maker of Maps

Before moving to Key West twenty years ago, Linda worked as one of the country's first female broadcast engineers at Chicago's NBC station, WMAQ. After fifteen years of chipping away at the glass ceiling in broadcasting - millimeter by millimeter, and winning a Peabody Award along the way - Linda took early retirement and relocated to Key West with her daughter. Many visits had convinced them Key West was the perfect place.

A student of the city's history and architecture, Linda is lucky enough now to spend her days in the Florida Room at the Monroe County Library on Fleming Street assisting County Historian Tom Hambright in maintaining the many documents and photographs from Key West's past. A map buff of longstanding, Linda still regrets passing up the opportunity to

purchase a collection of Civil War-era maps hand drawn by Jed Hotchkiss, Stonewall Jackson's cartographer. When Tom shared the library's original copy of the 1884 Key West Bird's Eye View Map with her, Linda was immediately determined to restore the map to its former glory using today's computer technology. She tells of her experience: "The closer I zoomed into it in Photoshop, the more amazing the map appeared. There were people on the boats, rigging on even the smallest boats, porches and louvres and architectural trim on the houses, plantings in the farms and crypts & angels in the cemetery. I could identify some of the houses looking much the same as today. It was amazing. In some cases pixel by pixel,

I began cleaning up the lines and adjusting the contrast and video levels. The artists who drew the map were amazing. There was no real 'standard style' for the buildings. I believe each building was drawn just as it looked at the time. I identified at least three different styles of drawing. I named one James. I loved his work great attention and care with the details, nice clean lines. Then there was Sebastian. Got angry with him he was sloppy with thick lines and incomplete buildings. The third one he was not too bad. I know, a little weird, but I spent a lot of time redrawing and cleaning up their work."

After weeks of work - some stints at the computer lasted ten hours - Linda was done. She had meticulously cleaned up, restored and tinted the 1884 Map.

The shots here demonstrate how Linda "zoomed in" on particular locations. On the left is that portion of the 1884 Bird's Eye Map that shows the underway paddlewheeler, the Morgan - found directly above the "FLA" on the large map. But here she came in close. Unfortunately it's impossible to identify any of the other ships, but the two-masted ship steaming out of port just below the paddlewheeler looks like it could be military. On the shore, the substantial buildings away from the docks would've been part of the Navy base. Looking back at the docks and following the nearby ones inland, the triangle you come to is Clinton Square. Between the water and the triangle and slightly to the left is Building One - a Naval stores warehouse that's today known as Clinton Square Market. On the right, Linda got close enough that you can see the railroad tracks on the pier behind Building One - used to ease the hard work of loading and unloading supplies from the ships that delivered them. The frame building directly facing the Square is the then-Custom House - in the same location as the big red Custom House of today. Notice the Audubon House is there - on the corner beyond Clinton Square - but the building that will be the Mel Fisher Museum is yet to be built.

On the left is a close-up of the Custom House and Clinton Square - now we can fully appreciate the obelisk memorializing the Civil War Union dead erected during the Union occupation. And there's the fence - paid for and constructed by Key West's Confederate survivors after the Yankees left. We can also see Greene and Whitehead Streets are clearly marked - as are all the streets on the map.

This is a close-up of the deck of the Morgan, from her bow to her smokestack (left.) This relatively tiny part of the Bird's Eye Map is just teeming with everyday activity. Looking back from the bow, there are travelers on deck enjoying the sights while other passengers walk to and fro around the staterooms. The bridge is the next deck up and someone appears to be standing in front of it. There's rigging, a lifeboat, and the smokestack that demonstrates the paddlewheeler is underway.

The word to describe the experience of looking at the restored 1884 Bird's Eye View Map is "awe." Those who live here will immediately zoom in on their own favorite places - the cemetery, a certain house, a certain building. Those who are just discovering Key West will find it fascinating to realize how much on the island remains the same after a hundred-and-twenty-five years.

Linda Todhunter has truly given us a gift of history. Now it's possible for anyone to hold Key West in their hands and get lost as they mentally wander the city's busy waterfront and quiet, residential lanes - gaining an insight into a Key West of well over a century ago

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