“It shows businesses, street life and family life,” Schein said. Cathcart specialized in what was called “cartoon” or “pictorial” maps, illustrated with drawings of life or landmarks.
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What interested him most was Cathcart’s 1947 illustrated map of Chinatown. It took years for Jim Schein to dig around in the collection. She later sold the collection to the Scheins when they opened their map store on Upper Grant Avenue. They were rescued by Laura Dorenzo, a neighbor. When the old man died alone in 1985, his landlord was ready to take Cathcart’s materials - hundreds of maps and thousands of photographs - to the city dump. Jim Schein and his wife and partner, Marti, rescued Cathcart’s work from the dustbin of history, almost literally. Schein agrees with one of Cathcart’s guiding principles: “You could write a thousand stories on the material of the old San Francisco map.” “It’s a book about a map,” said Jim Schein, a dealer in old maps. It’s called “Gold Mountain Big City,” and it’s about Cathcart’s fascination with San Francisco’s Chinatown. Now comes a new book about Cathcart and his work.
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“A map is like a book,” he told The Chronicle’s Robert O’Brien in 1947. Bret Harte and Mark Twain had lived there in the old days, and by the time Cathcart moved there in 1939, more than 75 painters, poets, sculptors and other artists had studios there.Ĭathcart’s rent was only $14 a month, low enough so that he could begin a new career.
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It was the heart of San Francisco’s artistic life until it was torn down in 1959 to make way for the Transamerica Pyramid.