New York, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah and Santa Fe — colonial streets and great fires…← Cities in picturesNew York, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah and Santa Fe — colonial streets and great fires, bridges, bells and boulevards, in old photographs, engravings and paintings. How well do you really know America's cities?

New York: a Dutch wall, a bridge-builder's wife and a reversed sky

Washington, D.C.: L'Enfant's plan, the 1814 fire and a marble obelisk

Boston: two lanterns, a grasshopper and a wave of molasses

Philadelphia: a cracked bell, a giant's bones and a carved sun

Chicago: a fire, a fair, a blameless cow and a river run backward

San Francisco: a gate named before gold, a phoenix, an orange bridge

New Orleans: a regent's name, silent bells and a canal never dug

Charleston: palmetto logs, a black steeple and a hand-cranked submarine

Savannah: squares, a Christmas gift and a moss that isn't moss

Santa Fe: a palace, a revolt, a trail's end and a stairway of legend

Images: Wikimedia Commons — public-domain works and photographs released into the public domain or under CC0 (including the Library of Congress, the Rijksmuseum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Zestly is not affiliated with any museum, archive or city named here.

Zestly

American cities