“New York Sketches,” a new collection of E.B. White’s musings about New York City, offers two pleasures, one nostalgic and one stylistic: There is the invocation of the New York of the 1930s ...

In the latter half of the 19th century, panoramic, or “bird’s-eye view,” city maps became a staple of commercial art. New Orleans was depicted in several such views between 1851 and 1884.