Los Angeles Map 1877 Bird's-Eye View - Los Angeles, Wilmington, Santa Monica

Eli Sheldon Glover, one of the great American viewmakers of the golden age of bird's-eye city views, produced this rare and magnificent panorama of Los Angeles in 1877, published by Glover himself in the city and lithographed by A.L. Bancroft of San Francisco. Glover had built his career working for view-making pioneer Albert Ruger before striking out on his own in Chicago, only to see his Merchants Lithographing Company destroyed in the Great Fire of 1871; he subsequently worked his way west through Ontario, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Montana and Wyoming before settling briefly in Los Angeles in 1876 and 1877, where he produced a total of sixteen views of California cities. This view is among the earliest of Los Angeles, predated only by Kuchel & Dresel's 1857 views, Augustus Koch's 1871 panorama, A.E. Matthews's 1873 view and Glover's own 1876 view of East Los Angeles, and Reps locates surviving copies only at the Library of Congress, the Bancroft Library and UCLA.

The main panorama looks from the area around present-day Dodger Stadium toward the Pacific Ocean, showing the city's major streets and earliest buildings, the largest of which is the church on Los Angeles Street west of Old Town, with the old circular Plaza visible at the street's eastern end. The Los Angeles River winds toward the Pacific through dozens of farms and vineyards, crossed by a number of early bridges and railroad lines that were just beginning to knit the young city together. Smaller companion views show the recently built harbor at Wilmington and San Pedro Bay, with the Southern Pacific Railroad's wharf and depot marked alongside distant views of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains. A third view depicts the competing wharf at Santa Monica, where the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad's line and depot anchor the newly laid-out town grid.

This exceptionally rare view makes a fitting gift for a Los Angeles family with roots in the city's earliest documented growth years, or for a collector drawn to the golden age of American bird's-eye city views specifically. We are aware of no other example of this view having appeared on the market, making it a genuinely singular find for anyone building a collection of early Los Angeles imagery, distinct from Glover's companion 1877 view of Santa Barbara issued the same year. It's available unframed, in the full range of sizes from a compact print through to a large-format piece for a bigger wall.