1908 Birds-eye-view of Saint John, N.B. - when commerce was dramatic

Visible in this 1908 (BEV) map of Saint John, N.B. are:

A) New Brunswick Cold Storage Co. Limited

B) The Patrick Brown residence, 92 Paradise Row

C) Intercolonial Railway (ICR) Grain Elevator and conveyor line over Mill Street

D) the dome shape of Victoria Skating Rink

E) Union Station, with a streetcar passing in front

F) the Hospital

[scanned by Doreen Hayes]

Everyone loves to pour over antique Birds-Eye-View maps of their city or town. In the 19th Century the B.E.V. was a much desired trophy for successful men of business to hang on the office wall - because the salesmen who canvassed for the Lithographer ensured that every prominent business was drawn in. Even the stately homes were drawn in, with much detail, in the hope that proud homeowners would buy a copy of the B.E.V. portrait of their town. Today, every tourist district from Mexico City to Ottawa offers reproduction B.E.V.s to visitors looking for a quality souvenir.

Several B.E.V. portraits of Saint john were drawn over a 75 year period, and I think the hardest to find is the 1908 view published by James Lovell Wiseman, a Montreal Lithographer. I have never seen an original, but I like it because the Saint John Valley (THE LOST VALLEY) is pencilled in with such dramatic effect. My other favourite is the view of the docks of Montreal Harbour, produced by Wiseman but I am only hunting for an original of the 1908 Saint John map. Until I find one, these scans provided by Doreen Hayes will do.

I do not know what, if any, subscription fees Wiseman charged the businesses which were given prominence in this 1908 map, but I do see that commerce in the old valley was prominent. Saint John had just gone through a building boom, which added approximately $2 million worth of new commercial buildings, and upgrading of the port infrastructure. The port was heavily subsidized by Federal policies and rate structuring, which did promote an air of confidence - that is until a brief economic slump just before WW1.

When one enjoys these old charts, we should not assume that what we see is literal truth. These are promotional products, not faithful renderings. Often these B.E.V.s deceive as much as the old postcards of that era, which removed the poorly dressed pedestrians and the horse apples dropped in front of a proud man's business. For example - "INTERCOLONIAL ELEVATOR". When our ancestors walked down Mill Street they would actually read INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY on the massive wooden structure. Note that the tenement houses on the north Valley wall are depicted as neatly terraced, but of course nothing was ever so neat on either slope. Folks crowded in wherever they could acquire a lot of sufficient square footage to be able to squeeze in another structure.

1908 Birds Eye View of Saint John, N.B. which was produced by J.L. Wiseman, a Lithographer in Montreal. (This section is the left third of the chart.) This surviving copy of the map, somewhat damaged, was reproduced in the 1970s and given out to retail customers. [These scans provided by Doreen Hayes]