Fans of scifi retrofuturism will be excited to see this recovered piece – Verticalville – that I’m happy to post for the first time. Verticalville is an obscure art piece, as near as I can tell unknown to the Internet. Let’s enjoy the art and take a deep dive on what is known about this piece.
Verticalville was stuck in the back of my mind every time I talked about retrofuturism. I remembered it from a disused textbook on somebody’s shelf from 30+ years ago – an old picture in an old book. Evocative, yet simple – the picture sucked me into a story about living life in an 1895 arcology, a proto-Mortal Engines habitat and what that might feel like. I forgot about the picture for years, but I never forgot about how it made me feel.
Flash forward to five years ago – I remembered Verticalville and decided I’d like to have it for a computer wallpaper. Surely it was on the Internet somewhere, I said to myself. Off to Google for a fun little detective project. Hours and hours later, I was no closer to finding this original picture than the Verticalville puzzle based on this picture. Where in the Sam Hill is Verticalville, I kept asking. Years passed by, more Google-fu searches, still nothing to be found.
Eventually, I remembered the name of the textbook and started checking local libraries. No one had a copy – it’d been out of print for years. I eventually found one online and scraped together some nickels and dimes to purchase it. As soon as the UPS guy delivered, I cracked it open and checked the back: Verticalville in all of it’s glory – see below:
To this day, I’m still unclear where the picture comes from. Here’s what the description says: “A comic-weekly artist of 1895, inspired by the development of the skyscraper, has sketched a nightmarish version of the super-building of the future. Hydraulic and electric elevators were one factor – steel girder frames were another – in winging offices and apartments toward the skies. The City now had its focus, the cluster of towering business structures. A poet wrote: “All cities are mad, but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful, but the beauty is grim.”
The artist signature says ‘Hamilton’ (visible in the picture above – lower left). Other than that, we’re still not sure where the picture comes from.
But this is something I’m happy to share with all of you! Verticalville is a powerful piece of retrofuturism and I’m glad I can put it out there for the world to enjoy.
