Bird's-Eye View of Los Angeles, 1909

The story of this map

In 1909 Los Angeles was a booming young city that had not yet become the sprawling one everybody knows, and Worthington Gates caught it at that moment. His bird’s-eye view, printed by the Western Lithograph Company and sold by the Birdseye View Publishing Company with a 24-page index to its buildings, is the last great hand-drawn portrait of the city. Our restored print is made from the Library of Congress copy.

The drawing is dense and affectionate. Downtown is rendered block by block, office buildings, hotels, churches and warehouses each with their own windows and rooflines, and from there the streets run out across the basin toward orchards and open land, with the mountains drawn along the horizon. It is a city of streetcars and citrus, on the verge of the oil, film and freeway decades that would transform it beyond recognition.

For anyone from Los Angeles this is a print full of small discoveries: a street they know, a neighbourhood that was still fields. It suits a living room, an office or a bungalow hallway, and the warm colouring works with wood and white plaster. It belongs to our American Cities collection and pairs naturally with the 1876 view of San Diego or the 1851 map of California from our State Maps collection.

Printed to order on archival matte paper and framed in the country of delivery.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Restoration plan: crop scan margins, balance colour cast and levels while keeping the paper tone, remove library stamps and scanner artefacts if present, gentle sharpening. The LC item is printed on both sides; the recto bird's-eye view is used and the verso street map is not part of this print. No repainting of original content.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.