Seattle entrepreneur and amateur photographer O.P. (Oliver Phelps) Anderson (1859-1941) was the son of Alexander Jay Anderson (1832-1903), president of the Washington Territorial University (now University of Washington) from 1877-1882. O.P. trained as a draughtsman and by 1890 had started a civil engineering and map publishing business, O. P. Anderson & Company (later O. P. Anderson Map & Blue Print Company). In 1911, Carl Kroll acquired the Anderson Map Company and the Washington Map and Blueprint Company to become the Kroll Map Company, which is still in operation as of 2019.

This street map of the city includes a key with old and new street names, railroad and street railway routes, outlines of Seattle's nine wards with indication of the lands being filled in along the Duwamish River tidelands, and outlines of West Seattle, South Seattle, Ballard, and Columbia.

Text on map: Anderson's 1896 Street and Guide Map of the City of Seattle, Washington. Compiled from the Latest Official Records by the O. P. Anderson Map & Blue Print Co. (Inc.), Scale 1200 feet to the inch, C. W. Towsley, Sole Agent. Copyright 1896 by the O. P. Anderson Map & Blue Print Co. (Inc.), Occidental Block, Seattle, Washington.

Caption source information: "About Kroll Map Company," Kroll Map Company, https://www.krollmapcompany.com/who-we-are/.