1905 Commercial Printing House Map of Los Angeles

A scarce 1905 map of Los Angeles by the Commercial Printing House for the Granite Securities Company, with an unusual bird's-eye view of the region on the verso.

A Closer Look

Covering Downtown Los Angeles and its environs, this map provides a glimpse of Los Angeles when it was growing at a tremendous pace (the city's population tripled between 1900 and 1910). Streets are labeled and indexed according to a grid surrounding the map. Red lines trace the 'yellow car' streetcar system of the Los Angeles Railway (owned by Henry Huntington), as indicated in the small legend towards the top-right. Additional electric rail lines are also indicated, including the Pacific Electric and three additional lines, most of which Huntington also owned and all of which were absorbed by the Pacific Electric in the following years.

The verso displays a bird's-eye view of Greater Los Angeles, including Hollywood, Santa Monica, Long Beach, and Pasadena. Many towns sprang up nearly overnight in this region due to the ongoing oil boom in the early 20th century. Both local (streetcar and interurban electric) and long-distance railways (including the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe) are traced. One quite unusual feature of this map is the location of the port of Los Angeles adjacent to Santa Monica, near today's Pacific Palisades neighborhood. This resulted from an acrimonious disagreement between two influential groups in the city over the placement of the port.

The Free Harbor Fight

The dispute over the location of the Port of Los Angeles, also known as the Free Harbor Fight, bitterly divided the elites of Los Angeles and California more broadly in the late 19th century and tied into broader struggles over the relative economic might and political power of Northern and Southern California, as well as the influence of the Southern Pacific Railroad over the state's politicians. By the 1880s, it was clear that Los Angeles was on track to becoming a large city and that Santa Monica Bay, to the city's west, could serve as the location of one of the premier ports on the western coast of North America. Two locations were floated for the construction of a large, modern port: one at San Pedro, which provided a very good natural harbor, and one at Santa Monica, which was less naturally suited but already had a rail link with Los Angeles and the rest of California via the Southern Pacific. Though perhaps convenient, this rail link would also give the Southern Pacific and its president, Collis P. Huntington, a monopoly on access to the port, allowing it to charge whatever price it wanted.

In anticipation of being chosen as the port's site, in the early 1890s, Southern Pacific built what was then the longest wharf in the world, extending nearly a mile into the bay, at Santa Monica. An intense campaign of lobbying and political pressure played out in the closing years of the century. Local elites in Los Angeles, including the Chamber of Commerce and L.A. Times editor Harrison Gray Otis powerfully advocated for the 'Free Port' at San Pedro. Knowing that federal funding was essential to completing such a large port, both sides lobbied hard in Washington, D.C., for their proposed site. In 1896, Congress established an engineering commission to determine which site would be best.

Despite Huntington's vast fortune and powerful influence in the U.S. Congress, the 'Free Port' advocates benefitted from the surprising pluckiness of California Senator Stephen White, who amended the bill establishing the commission to prevent monopolistic practices by Southern Pacific if Santa Monica were chosen. He then spoke at length on the floor of the Senate about Southern Pacific's other monopolistic practices and domineering influence in California's politics. The following year, the engineering commission determined that San Pedro was the better harbor, and construction began on what would become the Port of Los Angeles, which opened for business and was annexed by the City of Los Angeles in 1909.

For his principled stand, Senator White, a Democrat from San Francisco, was celebrated widely in Republican-heavy Los Angeles, with a parade thrown in his honor and a statue of him built overlooking the new port. In the following years, Huntington's nephew, Henry Huntington, who had effectively been ejected by bondholders from Southern Pacific's leadership upon his uncle's death in 1900, became one of the leading businessmen in Southern California through his Pacific Electric Railway, which, among other things, provided a passenger connection between Los Angeles and San Pedro (freight traffic to the port was handled by several rail lines, including, from 1912, the Southern Pacific).

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared by the Commercial Printing House for the Granite Securities Company in 1905. Only one example is noted in the OCLC, which is part of the collection at the New York Public Library. The map is scarce to the market.