1927 Godwin Pictorial Map of San Francisco, California

This is a 1927 Harrison Godwin pictorial map of San Francisco, California - considered the best genre illustration of that city. The map offers a wealth of unique detail that only a local would know - the balloon over the Presidio, a well-known homeless character in Richmond, criminal activity in Sutro Forest, and more.

A Closer Look

Coverage embraces San Francisco from the Golden Gate to the Mission and the Pacific to the Bay. The map is granular in its historical detail, capturing even the antics of local homeless characters - such as the 'Rags Bottles Sacks' man in Richmond. Comic illustrations appear alongside depictions of San Francisco landmarks, including the Fine Arts Palace, the Twin Peaks, and Fisherman's Wharf. Golden Gate Park is rich with engrossing local content. The city's schools, churches, hospitals, post offices, and the U.S. Mint (complete with workers shoveling gold coins into the back of a van) are marked. A number of golfers and golf courses populate the map, with one fellow holding a sign that reads, 'San Francisco has 365 golfing days in the year.' Placards near the bottom border bear facts about the city and list its banks and theaters. Comic panels line the bottom border and present events in San Francisco's history, from its founding to its many fires. An inset in the lower left marks important events, while the inset in the lower right depicts the Greater Bay Area.

20th Century Pictorial Cartography

Pictorial qualities have been common in cartography from at least the 16th century when publishers like Braun and Hogenberg incorporated view-like qualities and other pictorial elements into their famous city plans. Braun and Hogenberg, and similar cartographers, issued their town books to express not necessarily the geography of their subjects but rather the 'essence' of the town/city. As mathematics and surveying principles advanced, travel increased, and the ability to translate 2-dimensional cartographic perspectives into an understanding of the actual world became commonplace, maps themselves transformed. This trend is a recognizable progression that evolved cartographic conventions from the 17th to the 19th centuries. By the late 19th century, most maps had become geographical tools that illustrated the region cartographically but failed in the original raison d'être as expressed by Braun and Hogenberg, to illustrate a place's 'essence' So, where a city map of 19th-century Paris might provide a completely navigable presentation of the city, one could glean almost nothing of Paris' character. In the late 18th century, the first modern 'pictorial' style maps developed. These maps, like Tomas Lopez's 1788 map of Seville, attempted to provide both cartographic accuracy and pictorial elements that might convey a city's character. In that case, Lopez incorporated pictorial vignettes to illustrate important buildings and monuments. This style became increasingly common throughout the 19th-century and early 20th centuries, particularly in centers like London, Paris, and Rome, where they were mass-produced. The style further evolved in the early to mid-20th century, when revolutionary cartographers and illustrators like MacDonald Gill, Jo Mora, Frank Dorn, Ernest Dudley Chase, and others combined vignette style illustrations, modern printing techniques, inspiration from Japanese printmaking and manga, and from clever satirical cartographers/artists like Fred Rose, to produce maps that once again focused on revealing the essence a place, usually, but not always, at the sacrifice of cartographic precision.

Publication History and Census

This map was created and published by Harrison Godwin in 1927. We note four cataloged examples in OCLC at Pennsylvania State University, Brigham Young University, the State Library of Oregon, and the California Historical Society. An example is also part of the David Rumsey Map Collection and at the La Jolla Map Museum.