“Aerial Alphabets” — The Age of Disfigurement

“…When street architecture disappears, when the metropolis becomes one vast expanse of aerial alphabets, when the dome of St. Paul’s and the towers of Westminster are intercepted by a gigantic web of posts and rails, the dullest soul will feel that a wanton outrage is being perpetrated. I went on cynically to reflect that someday or other the crazy structure would come down with a rush…” — The Age of Disfigurement by Richardson Evans, National Review, October 1890.

 

⁂ 

 Illustration by Alfred Concanen (1835-86). The fold-out frontispiece to Henry Sampson’s A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times; Illustrated by anecdotes, curious specimens and biographical notes, lithographic stone print in five colors, 1874.