Item #7158 Official Transportation and City Map of Los Angeles California and Suburbs. Laura L. Whitlock.

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Official Transportation and City Map of Los Angeles California and Suburbs.

Los Angeles: Railway Official Transportation Data, 1913. Chromolithograph, 43.75” x 30”, plus margins. CONDITION: Good, discreet repairs on verso along a few folds, a few small holes at folds, some toning to old folds, a few minor stains to margins.

The fourth state of an important and highly detailed map of Los Angeles and its transportation system, originally published the year after mapmaker Laura L. Whitlock’s office was damaged in the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building, resulting in the destruction of some of her work in progress.

This map extends from Glendale in the north to Hathorn in the south, and from Hollywood in the west to South Pasadena in the east. The two principal transportation lines depicted are the railway city system of the Los Angeles Railway Company (in yellow), and the Pacific Electric Railway Co.’s interurban system (in red). A number of railroads are also depicted in black and blue (the Southern Pacific Railroad, the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, and Glendale & Eagle Rock Railway). In a 1911 Los Angeles Times magazine ad, Whitlock claimed that her map was “the only map containing exclusive railway data, as the electric railway officers give no data to other publishers” (quoted in Allen). The city of Los Angeles is bounded by a green line, and ten concentric circles of one-mile radiuses indicate distances from the city center. The Los Angeles river is seen stretching from top-middle to the middle-right, and the plat map of the city features street names and districts. Some of the map’s many details include railroad stations, a university, cemeteries, and in Exposition Park, Whitlock locates the Natural History Museum, Expo Bloc, Armory, and the racetrack-turned-rose-garden (recently converted in 1909). Relief is shown by hachure.

Born in Iowa, Laura L. Whitlock (1862–1934) was a cartographer, map publisher, and travel professional. Trained as a music teacher, she moved with her mother from Nebraska to Los Angeles in 1895 and worked as an “excursion agent” and tour guide shortly after arriving in California, organizing and leading trips to destinations such as the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. In 1903, she opened a “travel and hotel bureau” in downtown Los Angeles and in 1907 became president of the Pacific Coast Travel Club. Whitlock had an office in the Los Angeles Times building when it was bombed in 1910 by a union member belonging to the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers—who targeted the newspaper because of its anti-union editorial policy. Her maps were often copied without permission but she was proactive in seeking restitution. Printer N. Bowditch Blunt was criminally convicted for copying her maps, which constituted the first criminal conviction for copyright violation in America. Whitlock also brought a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Map and Address Co. and the Security Savings Bank for copyright infringement when they sold unauthorized copies of her maps. In 1918, she also sued the city engineer of Los Angeles, alleging that he had copperplates made from some of her maps without her permission; the matter was settled out of court. By 1918, Sunset magazine dubbed her “the official map-maker of Los Angeles county” (quoted in Allen).

Various editions of this map are indicated by the four copyrights listed below the title for 1910, 1911, 1912 and 1913. Of these four editions, nine holdings are recorded in OCLC, but none of the present 1913 edition.

An important map of Los Angeles by a noted female cartographer. 

REFERENCES: Allen, Lily. “Mapping a City on the Move” at Huntington Library online.

Item #7158

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