1891 Map of LA Includes Drawings of Long-Gone Buildings

The Big Map Blog has a map of Los Angeles from 1891, back when only 65,000 people lived in the city and "environs." HB Elliott drew the map, described by BMB's curator as "a strange and slightly cubist take on the traditional birdseye illustration," for the Southern California Land Company. The map is doubly awesome because it has that old-timey map feature of a border made up of drawings of the buildings of the era--buildings like nineteenth century Los Angeles City Hall, which had a magisterial clock tower, or the County Court House, which also had a magisterial clock tower. Awesome. There are even interiors of a few buildings and drawings of agricultural subdivisions in Los Feliz. Pretty much every large building appears to be mixed-use and there is absolutely no parking, for those of you who dig the retro smart growth scene. The orientation is pretty hard to figure out and there are a whole bunch of wild street names (check out what is left of Custer Avenue on Google Maps), but to get your bearings, it helps to spot San Pedro Bay at the top of the map. You can download the whole map at BMB.
· Elliott's map of Los Angeles (1891) [Big Map Blog]