Map Showing Golden Gate Park, the Avenue and Buena Vista Park. Scale 400 ft. to 1 inch.

Description

To many San Franciscans, Joseph Britton and Jacques Joseph Rey’s maps of Golden Gate Park constitute familiar renditions of a much-loved San Francisco landmark. This map was published in multiple editions and states, often in municipal reports and publications, with each new edition reflecting the latest urban developments. Yet despite their somewhat obscure and non-commercial origin, the progressive development shown in each new edition has made the Britton & Rey maps of Golden Gate Park a modern collectors’ classic.

Neatline’s example of this map is the 1893 edition, among the earliest examples available on the market. It is, in essence, the ‘original state’ upon which all the later editions of this well-known plan were constructed. It was likely published as an appendix to the municipal report “Twenty-Second Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of San Francisco” since it was in this annual report that later editions of the same map were issued. That this is indeed the source of the map is corroborated by the fact that Buena Vista, Golden Gate, and Mountain Lake were the only three San Francisco parks that fell under the jurisdiction of the Board of Park Commissioners prior to the new charter of 1897.

The map is horizontally oblong, measuring 53 by 10 inches, and shows the park in its entirety: from D Street and Fulton in the north to H Street in the south; and from Baker Street in the east to the Pacific coast in the west. In the more built-up eastern end of the park, we find some of the institutions that still adorn it today, including the Conservatory of Flowers, the John Abram Garfield Monument, and the ballpark that eventually would become Kezar Stadium. The nursery shown in the same area was moved further into the park after the construction of the first Kezar Stadium in the 1920s.

On the northern and southern sides of the park, the map includes a single block of housing; on the eastern fringe of the park, a considerable part of Haight Ashbury has been included to show the full pathway system of the Panhandle. In general, the Panhandle is not the only historic landscape feature included outside of the main park. In the lower right corner of the map, we also find the oldest public park in San Francisco. Established in 1867 as the Hill Park, this green oasis was later renamed Buena Vista due to its elevation and the spectacular views of the city and bay that this created. 

In general, this map speaks to us about San Francisco’s exciting historical development from a small frontier town to a locus for some of the most significant strides in American culture and technology throughout the 20th (and 21st) century. The cartographers make this progress evident with each new state of this map. Thus, while it may seem obscure to the uninitiated, this wonderful chart is a testimonial from the past, telling us that even in a dynamic city like San Francisco, where changes are ubiquitous and constant, not everything is in as continuous flux as we might believe. We can look at this map and see not only the many changes but also how much has stayed the same.