A vanished city lives again...

Friday, November 27, 2009

Old panoramic "birds-eye" maps

These "birds-eye" maps of old Los Angeles on the Library of Congress website are must-have resources for any serious student of L.A. history.

The 1909 map is, in my humble opinion, the Greatest Map of L.A. Ever! This is the image that I referred to in this older post that first put the hooks in me with regard to historical Los Angeles. I've practically memorized this map, I've looked at it so many times.

Viewing tip: when you click on the thumbnail image and go to the Library of Congress page, don't bother with the complicated inline viewer, just go to the lower left of each page where it says "Download JPEG2000 image," snag that file, then view it directly in your computer's default picture-viewing program.

1909:


Click image for source at the Library Of Congress.


1894:


Click image for source at the Library Of Congress.


This one is notable for the detail of the landmark buildings depicted on its margins.

1891:


Click image for source at the Library Of Congress.


This is the earliest birds-eye map of Los Angeles in the online LOC database. Note the covered bridge over the Los Angeles River at Macy Street...

1874:


Click image for source at the Library Of Congress.

 

2 comments:

Duncan said...

If only I could make a living studying these maps and immersing myself in vanished L.A... a couple of these maps are in the new Taschen book, Los Angeles: Portrait of a City, which was recently given to me as partial payment for some work I did. I definitely like having the book, even though I had decided earlier not to buy it for myself, despite the Strand here in NY discounting it heavily. When I glanced at it briefly there, I found several mistakes--swapped captions (p 126-7), and, most egregiously, a picture of your iconic County Court House identified in one picture (p 93) as the 1889 city hall, even though "COUNTY COURT HOUSE" is spelled out clearly on the lawn. Makes a Los Anglophile crazy! Anyway, it's a big cumbersome book, and looking at Los Angeles Past etc is really more satisfying. As for reading the big book's text, again, it's too big and cumbersome, and I've proably already read in their other books what Starr and Heimann have written... oh well, I shouldn't complain. The more on old L.A., the merrier.

Food trucks map la said...

Amazing history piece, we will add some of these historical pieces to our mural on our food truck

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