1923 O'Shaughnessy Street Map of San Francisco, California

An example of M. M. O'Shaugnessy's 1923 urban planning map of San Francisco. It highlights the various types and quality of road surfaces throughout the city, while also demonstrating the uncertain future of certain neighborhoods in the quickly growing city.

A Closer Look

The city and county of San Francisco is presented, with most roads color-shaded to indicate their type of surface, ranging from wood to asphalt, with much of the city retaining various types of brick or cobblestone. Railway lines belonging to the Southern Pacific, the Twin Peaks Tunnel, military and government land, cemeteries, parks, remnants of the Spanish and Mexican era ranchos, golf courses, and other features are labeled throughout.

This map is notable for its inclusion and exclusion of elements of the city landscape that were later modified. For example, the exact future extent of the Marina was unclear at this time, which is why urban development cuts off abruptly just past Lewis St., a short-lived designation in the years when the neighborhood was built on the former site of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition. Ultimately, urban development ended at Marina Boulevarda, and north of the boulevard became a small park (effectively an extension of the Presidio), a harbor with docks for yacht clubs, and a small airfield that was later converted into the Marina Green.

Elsewhere, Mission Rock off the city's eastern coast was a grain terminal originally built in the 1870s; over time, additional landfill connected it to the mainland, becoming part of the neighborhood today known as Mission Bay (where here streets are ghosted in). At bottom-center, much of the street grid is speculative though not ghosted; in fact, the area around the reservoir and Lick Old Ladies Home would become part of McLaren Park, not fully planned until 1926. Conversely, the scale of Balboa Park as seen here was later curtailed; a jail on the west side of the Southern Pacific Line (now the route of Interstate 280) presented urban planners with a problem, until it was closed and this portion of land was dedicated to the City College of San Francisco. Around the time of this map's publication, with the increasing use of automobiles, serious consideration began for what would become the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge, opened the following decade.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared in 1923 by Michael Maurice O'Shaughnessy, San Francisco's city engineer, who more than anyone else helped to shape the city in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fire. It was printed by the Halpin Lithograph Co. in San Francisco. The map most likely appeared in the 1922-1923 Report of the Bureau of Engineering of the Department of Public Works, City and County of San Francisco, though existing digitized examples do not confirm this. Maps with this title or very similar titles were published in preceding and subsequent years, both folded as with the present map and, in some cases, as wall maps. However, there are no examples of this edition of the map in the OCLC, and we are unaware of any on the private market.