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Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff: Ansicht des spanischen Etablissements in St. Francisco [1st Printed View of San Francisco]
Title: Ansicht des spanischen Etablissements in St. Francisco [1st Printed View of San Francisco] Map Maker: Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff
Description: The earliest printed view of San Francisco and the Presidio, based upon a drawing by Wilhelm Gottlief Tilesius von Tilenau and German and Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff. The view is taken from the ship "Juno." Four Indians in reed canoe in left foreground. Presidio buildings and small figures walking on the shore in middleground, with hills in the distance. Langsdorff's view is widely considered the first view of the San Franicsco and the Presidio. Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff, Baron de Langsdorff (1774-1852) was a Prussian aristocrat, politician and naturalist. He lived in Russia and was better known by his Russian name, Grigori (Gregory) Ivanovitch. He was a member and correspondent of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences and a respected physician, graduated in medicine and natural history at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Langsdorff first participated as naturalist and physician in the great Russian scientific circumnavigation expedition commanded by Ivan Fedorovich Kruzenshtern, from 1803 to 1805. At Kamschatka, he left the expedition and proceeded on the Maria with Nicolai Rezanov, a Russian official who was commissioned to study the Russian American Company in Alaska and to conduct trade negotiations with Japan. The narrative contains a lengthy record of their stay in the Marquesas, and a "fuller account of Sitka and the settlement of San Francisco than any other contemporary account" (Sabin). The plates include eight of the Marquesas, five of Japan, three of Alaska and two of California. The Bancroft Library has drawings from that expedition, and one of them, a scene of the presidio from the expedition ship, is the earliest known view of San Francisco.
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