Beauties of America City Hall, New York 10" Plate

Circa 1814-1830: Brothers John and William Ridgway manufactured over 20 attractive American architectural views in their successful dark blue Beauties of America Series with its immediately recognizable rose medallion border, and this view of New York's City Hall depicts a family of three gazing at the elegant building. City Hall was finally completed in 1814 at the cost of half a million dollars, an enormous sum for the period, and was, as R.T. Haines Halsey asserts on page 52 of Pictures of Early New York on Dark Blue Staffordshire Pottery, "for many years...undoubtedly the handsomest public building of the country, and was regarded by citizens of New York with great civic pride." In fact, this building was so beloved that Halsey tells us it was "used by four different Staffordshire potters for the decoration of their wares." This plate is in excellent condition with no chips, cracks, or repairs and only extremely minor typical utensil marks on the face and minimal expected shelf wear on the reverse.