Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler has the greatest number of panoramic or “Birds-Eye View” maps in the collection of the Library of Congress.

More than 400 Thaddeus Fowler panoramas have been identified. There are 324 in the Library of Congress, including Oil City, Pennsylvania, published in 1896 by T. M. Fowler & James B. Moyer. Source: Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, Washington, D.C.

Many of what Fowler called “aero views” captured the small cities near our earliest oilfields. Panoramic maps were a popular cartographic form used to depict U.S. towns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Fowler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on December 21, 1842. He served in the 21st New York Volunteers in 1861 — was wounded at the Second Battle of Bull Run a year later — and discharged at Boston in 1863.

According to the Library of Congress, after the Civil War, Fowler migrated to Wisconsin. He established his own panoramic map firm and in 1870 produced views of Wisconsin towns. A panoramic map of Stewart, Ohio, that appears in D. J. Lake’s Atlas of Athens Company is the earliest Fowler view in the LOC collections.

In 1885, Fowler moved with his family to Morrisville, Pennsylvania, where he maintained his headquarters for 25 years as he traveled the country.

Morrisville served as his operating center as Fowler began to draw and publish views of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio cities – including many oil boomtowns. His production of Pennsylvania panoramas was greater than that of any other artist in any state. In the Library of Congress collection alone, there are 220 separate Fowler views of Pennsylvania.

Viewed from the north looking south, Thaddeus Fowler depicted Wichita Falls, Texas, population of 1,978, probably in the fall of 1890. Source: Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth.

An additional 165 Fowler views of Pennsylvania towns are in the Pennsylvania State Archives and at Pennsylvania State University. He also  visited the booming oilfield communities in Oklahoma and Texas.

“Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler (1842–1922) was perhaps the most prolific of the dozens of bird’s-eye view artists who crisscrossed the country during the latter three decades of the nineteenth century,” explains the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. “He produced at least seventeen views of different Texas cities in 1890 and 1891, but that output is dwarfed by his production of almost 250 views of Pennsylvania between 1872 and 1922.”

To date, 411 separate Fowler panoramas have been identified. His views of Pennsylvania towns suggest he concentrated on a specific geographical area in a given year, very likely to minimize transportation problems. From 1895 to 1897, he worked in the western part of the state, especially around Pittsburgh and in the northwest sector of Pennsylvania. In 1898 and 1899, Fowler sketched West Virginia towns, and from 1900 to 1903, he was back in western Pennsylvania.

Fowler gained commissions for city plans by interesting citizens and civic groups in the idea of a panoramic map of their community. After one town had agreed to having a map made, he would seek to involve neighboring communities. By noting that he had already secured an agreement for a view from one town in the area, he would play on the pride, community spirit, and sense of competition of adjacent communities.