Gold Mountain, Big City: Ken Cathcart’s 1947 Illustrated Map of San Francisco’s Chinatown

Schein, co-owner of Schein & Schein Old Maps in San Francisco, delivers a beautifully illustrated look at Ken Cathcart’s decorative 1947 map of San Francisco’s Chinatown. The book opens with a brief biography of photographer and illustrator Cathcart, who photographed Chinatown between 1939 and 1955. His collection of more than 1,000 images led to the creation of a thoroughly detailed map of Chinatown that “celebrates one hundred years of Chinese immigration” and was used by the city’s Board of Supervisors to promote San Francisco. For each of the dozens of photos and illustrations included, Schein provides illuminating context—historical (“San Francisco’s first Chinese laundry was established in 1851”), geographical (“The Stockton Tunnel... is the transit connection between downtown and the Chinatown-North Beach areas”), and cultural (“Modern slit-skirt dress... was a new style as of the 1930s and represented the modernization of the Chinese American woman”). Schein uses Cathcart’s photography and illustrations to highlight various points on the map: in one memorable example, Schein places a hand-drawn illustration of a kitchen above a photo of a young man packaging cooked duck at a restaurant and explains how “the idea of finished food, to be removed and eaten elsewhere, was unheard of in Euro-American culture prior to 1860.” Urban historians and armchair travelers alike will enjoy this spectacular tour. (Mar.)