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When it comes to collecting historical Americana, great rarity is just one of the considerations for determining a remarkable object.  The historical significance and context of an object, in terms of both the history of its day and its significance for future generations of Americans, is a great measure of the object's "importance".  This map is an excellent example of a remarkably rare object that is also of great importance.

The map is the first printed Plan of the City of Washington, D.C., printed by Philadelphia engravers James Thackara and John Vallance in early 1792.  At the time, Philadelphia served as the nation's capital.  The July 16, 1790 Residence Act passed by Congress authorized the new permanent capital at an area to be selected by President Washington.  Washington announced the location of the city on January 24, 1791, and Andrew Ellicott and Benjamin Bannaker surveyed the area of approximately 100 square miles upriver from George Washington's Mount Vernon estate at the point where the Potomac and Eastern Branch Rivers meet.  In March, 1791, Washington designated Pierre L'Enfant to plan the city layout, and Thomas Jefferson provided maps of European cities as a reference for the design.  By March, 1792, L'Enfant was dismissed by Washington because of difficulties working with other collaborators, including the city commissioners responsible for the city's construction.  L'Enfant was replaced by his assistant and lead surveyor, Andrew Ellilcott.  By this time, much of the plan was already complete, with Ellicott only making minor modifications to L'Enfant's plan. 

Philadelphia engravers James Thackara and John Vallance, and Boston engraver Samuel Hill, were commissioned to produce the first official, large scale printed versions of Ellicot's manuscript map of the city.  Each was provided a manuscript map to work from.  Realizing that it would take many months to engrave a highly detailed large-scale official map, both Thackara and Vallance in Philadelphia, and Hill in Boston, competing to be the first to distribute printed maps to the public, produced smaller, less detailed versions of the map to be printed as inserts to periodical magazines of the day.  Thackara and Vallance's map was the first to appear in March, 1792, in The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine, followed by Hill's map in April, 1792, in the Massachusetts Magazine.  The official large versions of the maps were not complete and printed until the summer of 1792.  Although the magazine versions of these maps are remarkably scarce and sought after today, they were mass produced and distributed in the periodicals, and thus examples surface every few years.¹ There exists, however, a separately issued unfolded version of the Thackara and Vallance map, printed from the same plate but on higher quality paper with wide borders and clear plate strike lines.  These separately issued versions are extraordinarily rare.  Two copies are held in the vaults of the Rare Maps division of the Library of Congress; one with wide borders and annotated in lead pencil "1st printed edition of the L'Enfant plan", and one with trimmed borders.  I am aware of only two other copies held in private hands, with this copy in the Rare Flags collection being the fifth.

While there are surely other maps that are as scarce or more so, in terms of numbers of known copies, the map's extreme rarity combined with its importance as the first printed map of the capital of the United States, one of the great capitals of the world and the seat of power for generations of Americans, past, present and future, elevates it as a national treasure.

¹ Worldcat library search for the map shows four copies, all of which are the Columbian Magazine edition: George Washington University, Harvard University, Yale University, University of Michigan.  New York Public Library search also shows a Columbian Magazine version. Of the four other known copies of the separately issued version that I am aware of, two copies are in the Library of Congress, one copy is in the possession of rare map dealer Barry Lawrence Ruderman, and one copy was cited by Ruderman has having been sold by the New York firm of Martayan Lan.