1850s: The Whaling Capital of the World
The once small town looked like an entirely different landscape. Up on the hill, wealthy whaling families and city leaders built lavish homes and opulent gardens for themselves. Below, powerful merchant capitalists established buildings to reflect the city's prosperity: banks, schools, and similar public buildings. And down on the waterfront, a host of shoreside industries supported the whaling industry: shipbuilding, outfitting, cordage manufacturing, and spermaceti candle manufacturing, to name a few. Filled with shops, warehouses, factories, and boardinghouses, dynamic New Bedford offered a wide range of economic opportunities.
This map is part of the Harvard Map Collection.