There are two new additions to the Map Archives to better visualize and understand the buildings in Hopewell Borough before 1900: an annotated version of the Fowler Hopewell Borough 1887 map (birds-eye panorama), and a summary of buildings that existed when Hopewell Borough was incorporated in 1891 (keyed to the Fowler map).
The Annotated 1887 Fowler Panorama Map highlights the labels of buildings of interest (which can be difficult to find on the map), and adds call-outs to explicitly identify each building.
The Hopewell Boro Buildings in 1891 / Fowler Map Annotations document then serves both as a key to the Fowler map (with more information on each label), and extends the list of 1887 buildings from the Fowler map to include additional buildings that existed when Hopewell Borough was incorporated in March 1891. It is based on chapter 44 in Hopewell’s Past by Betty Gantz (1987).
Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler (1842-1922) was a traveling map maker, who specialized in hand-drawn panoramic birds-eye views, drawing towns at an oblique angle from an imaginary vantage point in the air — as if he was flying a drone. The Pennsylvania State Archives reports that he created 426 works of locations in the United States and Canada, including 248 of cities in Pennsylvania.
The Hopewell Museum has a Fowler map of Hopewell Borough on display, with copies for sale. The Hopewell Valley Historical Society has copies of the Pennington map for sale.
