Overview of the Rise of Pasadena.
Wood & Church’s Bird’s-Eye View Pocket Guide of Pasadena and Vicinity.
$875
1 in stock
Description
This is an 1895 bird’s-eye view of Pasadena, California, produced by Wood & Church. Providing an intricate overview of the city, illustrating each structure, it captures Pasadena at a time of tremendous growth, highlighting the lush landscape and stunning views it afforded.
The view is oriented towards the northeast, with downtown Pasadena (now known as Old Pasadena) at center-left, the Arroyo Seco at far left, and the San Gabriel Mountains, including Mt. Lowe and Mt. Wilson, in the background. Eighty points of interest are noted on the view and recorded in an index at bottom, including schools, churches, businesses, hotels, rail stations (depots), and natural features like mountain peaks and canyons. Local landmarks such as the Raymond Hotel and the Throop Polytechnic Institute (future California Institute of Technology) are readily identifiable.
Several features related to the Mt. Lowe Railway (the critical piece being the “Great Incline” labelled here) were still under construction when Wood & Church prepared the view and were quite the sensation when opened. Several railroad and streetcar lines appear, including the Santa Fe Railway, Southern Pacific Railroad, and L.A. Terminal Railway. As a 2014 article on Los Angeles Magazine‘s website by L.A. Public Library Map Librarian Glen Creason (https://lamag.com/news/citydig-mapping-pasadenas-first-rose-parade) notes, this view is ideal for tracing the routes of the earliest occurrences of the Rose Parade, beginning in 1891 and managed by the Valley Hunt Club until the Tournament of Roses Association was created in 1895.
Publication information
This view appeared in the 1895 Hiram Reid book History of Pasadena… It is a facsimile, reduced in size, of the 1893 bird’s-eye view of the city (OCLC 227493858), drawn by Bruce Wellington Pierce and lithographed by Wood & Church. This printing of the view is not independently cataloged in the OCLC.
Cartographer(s):
Wood & Church was a publishing firm active in the early 1890s, known for producing illustrated guides and maps of Pasadena, California. Their most notable work is the Bird’s-Eye View Pocket Guide of Pasadena and Vicinity, originally published in 1893. This detailed panoramic map provided a comprehensive visual representation of Pasadena and its surroundings during that period.
In Hiram A. Reid’s 1895 book History of Pasadena, Wood & Church’s 1893 bird’s-eye view is included. This inclusion underscores the significance of their work in documenting the city’s development. The original 1893 edition of the map is considered extremely rare and is highly sought after by collectors and historians interested in Pasadena’s early history.
Condition Description
Slightly uneven toning. Professionally backed; the map was originally published on thin paper, but this example is now more sturdy and easy to handle or frame.
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