From LA Observed
Glen Creason, the author of the stupendously grand book Los Angeles in Maps, is the map librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library. So when he says on Facebook that this 1942 carte by Jo Mora is "one of THE greatest maps ever" and "one of the true masterpieces of pictorial mapping and my favorite Los Angeles map of all," ordinary schmoes like me have to listen. It has an honored place in the current map exhibition at the Central Library.
Mora is a pretty good story himself. Joseph Jacinto Mora was born in Uruguay in 1876, moved to the eastern United States as a boy, and after attending art school he worked as an illustrator and cartoonist in the Boston area. He moved west and in 1920 settled in Carmel to work on what the foundation calls his masterpiece: the Father Serra Cenotaph in the chapel at El Camelo Mission.
