Headquartered in the Grosse Building at the corner of 6th and Spring (now SB Tower), the Birdseye View Publishing Company mass-produced this exemplary axonometric rendering of Los Angeles in 1909.
Neither the first nor the most famous of the colloquially styled birdseye landscapes that came into vogue near the turn of the century, this long researched offering from artist Francis Lawrence lends that city a sense of fleshiness absent from sterile fire insurance and real estate maps.
Though this version is not the original colored lithograph complete with detailed index, it does benefit immensely from the first hand knowledge of editor Worthington Gates.
Gates was a high art inclined booster who later appeared as the “Charge d’Affaires” at Blanchard Art Gallery. Touted as the first gallery west of Chicago, FW Blanchard’s salon inducing parlor of art was located across from City Hall at 233 S. Broadway. There Gates sallied forth on voyages through a city grasping towards cosmopolitanism.
As seen here, the supposed sophistication of urban Los Angeles is not without its pitfalls. Unveiled racism appears at the site of the future Union Station where Chinatown is labeled “Chink Town.”
Above it, the famed Llewellyn Iron Works hints towards the mixed bounty of industrialism. Here the city built itself while simultaneously exacerbating common social fault lines carved around unionization and the battle for closed shops that would eventually culminate in the bombing of the LA Times in 1910.
Beyond the rail lines and the bank buildings sprouting upwards in today’s historic core, you’ll find Fiesta Park—one of the city’s first dedicated sports venues where USC athletics found its first home.