Réprésentation du feu terrible à nouvelle Yorck, que les Américains allumé pendant la nuit du 19. septembre 1776 (Representation of the terrible fire at New York, that the Americans lit during the night of September 19, 1776)

Four days after British troops commanded by General William Howe occupied Manhattan, a fire destroyed much of the city’s southwest quarter. At the time, the British blamed American Revolutionary sympathizers for starting the blaze, but its precise cause remains unknown. As General George Washington withdrew from the city on September 15, he had considered burning key structures but refrained when ordered not to do so by the Continental Congress. In this image, designed in Augsburg and reissued in Paris, flames engulf large, elegant buildings as skirmishes take place and figures flee. A wide street, perhaps intended to represent Broadway, resembles a thoroughfare in Europe more than it does Anglo-Dutch colonial New York.

The print belongs to a popular type known as "Vues d'optique," "Perspektivansichten," or Perspective Prints whose horizontal images often have mirror-image titles. When viewed through a perspective glass or zograscope—a device that contains a concave lens and mirror—the reversed image appears three-dimensional. Specially designed peep boxes also enhanced viewing. First published in Augsburg, then replicated in Paris, the print comes from a group of New York subjects that show British ships landing troops in lower Manhattan on September 15, 1776, occupying soldiers marching up Broadway, and a fire devastating the city shortly afterward. The group demonstrates broad European interest in events taking place across the Atlantic.