Bird's-Eye View of San Diego, 1876

The story of this map

In 1876 San Diego was a hopeful little town on one of the finest natural harbours on the Pacific, barely a decade after Alonzo Horton had laid out his “New Town” on the bay. E. S. Glover, one of the busiest bird’s-eye artists in the West, drew it that year; A. L. Bancroft & Company of San Francisco put it on stone and Schneider & Kueppers published it. Our restored print is made from the coloured lithograph in the Library of Congress.

The view is taken from over the water, so the wharf and the waterfront buildings are in the foreground and the grid of new streets runs back toward the hills. Much of it is still empty lots, which is exactly the charm: a few blocks of hotels, stores and houses, then open scrub and the promise of more. A block of descriptive text and a numbered index to points of interest along the bottom of the sheet let you find the wharf, the churches and the businesses the town was proudest of.

For a San Diego home this is the founding photograph the city never had. It suits a hallway, a beach house living room or an office, and its soft tones work with white walls and light wood. It belongs to our American Cities collection and pairs naturally with the 1909 view of Los Angeles or the 1851 map of California.

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 copy is recorded as conserved in 1976; any visible repair lines will be softened without redrawing. 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.