A unique example of Pearsall’s 1927 Long Beach plat atlas with added maps and provenance paste-ins.
Pearsall’s Map of Long Beach and Vicinity.
$3,800
1 in stock
Description
This is an extremely rare and unique 1927 plat atlas of Long Beach, California, prepared by surveyor R. V. Pearsall.
Consisting of 61 sectional maps of the City of Long Beach and the enclave of Signal Hill, the atlas notes individual lots and city blocks and their sizes, along with tracts, remnants of Mexican era ranchos, undeveloped areas (including planned subdivisions), the names of owners of large lots, topographic features, planned public works, and more. Among the larger plots are hundreds of acres belonging to sisters Susana, Guadalupe, and Maria de Los Reyes Dominguez, daughters of Don Manuel Dominguez (1803-1882), who owned the Rancho San Pedro, which covered much of the South Bay (southwest Los Angeles County).
In addition to the individual maps, the atlas includes an index map, street index, tract index, pastedowns (including a newspaper article on a highway traffic survey of Long Beach, a map of Southern California fault lines, and a large foldout of the region’s water supply with the Colorado River Aqueduct), and some handwritten annotations.
This atlas is especially valuable as it documents Long Beach just a handful of years before the destructive 1933 Long Beach earthquake, which killed roughly 120 and caused millions of dollars in damage. Many buildings had been shoddily constructed or built on unstable foundations, such as landfill or alluvium, leading to thousands of buildings suffering severe damage or being entirely destroyed. In the aftermath of the earthquake, stricter building standards were instituted in Long Beach and throughout California (via the Field Act), the federal government (the Reconstruction Finance Corporation) took part in disaster reconstruction for one of the first times, and Los Angeles Union Station was constructed by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad to replace the heavily damaged La Grande Station in Long Beach.
Census and publication information
The only other known example is a c. 1919 edition held by California State University Long Beach (OCLC 1453537122), though the 1940 and 1941 editions of the Inventory of the County Archives of California indicates that 1939 and 1940 editions of Pearsall’s Map of Long Beach and Vicinity were also printed and were part of the holdings of the Los Angeles County (Los Angeles) Assessor’s Office. This corresponds to Pearsall’s obituary in the Long Beach Independent, which refers to four editions of his county atlas that were “used extensively by three generations of city engineers in Long Beach.”
A stamp and bookplate on the inside of the front cover indicate that this example of the atlas was previously owned by the architectural firm of Natt Piper & Geo. W. Kahrs.
Cartographer(s):
Ropha V. Pearsall (March 16, 1885 – September 10, 1977), better known as R. V. Pearsall, was a civil engineer and surveyor active in Long Beach, California, in the early-mid 20th century. He is credited with subdividing nearly half of the city. Born in Grand Ledge, Michigan, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State University). After working in Michigan for roughly a decade, he moved with his wife to Long Beach in 1912 and established his own land surveying firm. One of his first large projects was surveying the storm drain for State St. (now part of the Pacific Coast Highway), the largest public works project in Long Beach to that date.
Pearsall would go on to survey sites throughout Long Beach, including a series of residential subdivisions from the early 1920s. His decades of experience and first-hand involvement in building the city’s housing and infrastructure made Pearsall the most trusted authority on surveying, property divisions, and urban planning in Long Beach. He was also an active member of the Long Beach Masonic Lodge, serving on its board of trustees for many years. After his death, his engineering firm was continued by his sons, Keith and Richard.
Condition Description
Wear on cover, binding loosening, some water damage at top near binding on some pages, but otherwise interior pages are remarkably clean.
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