1874 Britton and Rey Map of Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

An extremely rare map and one of the earliest specific illustrations of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. The map, issued in 1874, covers the eastern half of Golden Gate Park from 19th Avenue to Buena Vista Park and Broderick Street. San Franciscans began to recognize the need for a public recreation area to rival New York City's Central Park in the late 1860s. However, plans for Golden Gate Park did not get underway until the early 1870s. When this map was printed in 1874, the park was still in under construction and it was by no means certain that the project would be completed. even two years later, in 1876, the fiscally beleaguered dream of Golden Gate Park was nearly replaced by a series of commercial racetracks that, fortunately, never materialized.

The design of Golden Gate Park, as seen here, is the work of San Francisco visionaries William Hammond Hall and John McLaren. The duo performed much the same function as Fredrick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in New York's Central Park, which is to say, laying out topography, preparing garden design, and developing the architectural character of the space. The modern day park, aside from its overall topography, general form, and the configuration of various drives and transverses, bear little relationship to the layout seen here. Nonetheless, the planed park did eventually open as one of the finest urban recreation areas in the world.

engraved by Britton and Rey of San Francisco, this map was issued in the 1874 edition of the San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Years 1873-4, ending June 30, 1874.