L.A. Streets: Then and Now

Back when I was first learning about Los Angeles past, I made frequent use of Brent Dickerson's wonderful illustrated historical narrative, A Visit to Old Los Angeles and Environs. (I continue to learn a lot from it to this day, in fact.) Anyway, in his page about New High Street and Broadway, Mr. Dickerson presents a map of the street layout in downtown in the early 20th century. I've found it to be very useful a number of times, especially for finding streets that no longer exist.

A few months ago, though, I got the idea to superimpose a Google map from today over the old map, mostly to see exactly where the freeways were built in relation to the existing streets and neighborhoods of the '40s and '50s. Here was the result:



Unfortunately, I couldn't get the two maps to align precisely, but this was a good enough result for the purpose I intended, and much more. I hope you find the many possible comparisons as interesting as I do!

(Thanks to Mr. Dickerson for permission to post the modification of his original map.)

ADDENDUM: There are two much better overlay maps in this post. Check those out, if you haven't already.