Curiosity 84: Maps

A quick one today. I was searching for maps of downtown Los Angeles in 1941–42 for a project I'm working on—in particular, I was interested in how far removed the LA downtown library was from the erstwhile Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist temple (now occupied by the Japanese American National Museum). While looking, I stumbled on a video about an astonishing map collection:

Or more accurately, it was a hoard, because the assembler of all this cartographic wealth apparently grabbed up anything he could get his hands on. Rhyme and reason? Not so much. As the Los Angeles Times describes the collection, which surfaced in 2012,

Stashed everywhere in the 948-square-foot tear-down [in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of LA] were maps. Tens of thousands of maps. Fold-out street maps were stuffed in file cabinets, crammed into cardboard boxes, lined up on closet shelves and jammed into old dairy crates. Wall-size roll-up maps once familiar to schoolchildren were stacked in corners. Old globes were lined in rows atop bookshelves also filled with maps and atlases. A giant plastic topographical map of the United States covered a bathroom wall and bookcases displaying Thomas Bros. map books and other street guides lined a small den.

The Central Library's map librarian, Glen Creason (narrator of the above video), reckoned that there were easily a hundred thousand artifacts, doubling the library's extant collection. And they surfaced thanks to a realtor's intuition when he was directed to clean out and launch the demolition of the house upon its occupant, John Feather's, death, with no known survivors. The realtor, Matthew Greenberg, credited "the nagging voice of my mother in the back of his mind"—his mother having been a professor of library sciences. 

The trove contained everything from Esso and and Chamber of Commerce road maps to historic gems, Creason said.

“He has every type of map imaginable. There’s a 1956 pictorial map of Lubbock, Texas. He’s got a 1942 Jack Renie Street Guide of Los Angeles [and] four of the first Thomas Bros. guides from 1946. Those are very hard to find. The one copy we have is falling apart because it’s been so heavily used. We had to photocopy it.”
    Gingerly fingering an atlas-sized 1918 map with a faded blue cover, Creason opened it up to show the National Map Co.’s “Official Paved Road” guide to the United States. The tattered pages illustrated the location of paved roads with red and blue ink.
    Creason was also enthralled by the discovery of several “Mapfox” Los Angeles street guides published in 1944. Creason said in his 32-year library career he had never seen one. Also tucked into Feathers’ collection was a pocket-size “Geographia Authentic Atlas and Guide to London and Other Suburbs,” showing streets, parks, lakes and rivers that Creason dated as pre-World War I.

The oldest artifact was a 1592 map of Europe.

Collecting—or as the case may be, hoarding—is so fascinating. Me, I collect Japanese tea implements with dragonfly motifs: I have one teapot ☜ and two cups. That's enough of a collection for me. (As for all my books, I suppose that's more of a hoard. But books are completely understandable. No?)