Off the Chart

Do you ever worry you will become that crazy person dying in a house full of a equally crazy collection? If you haven’t, you might want to think about it; but if you have the story of John Feathers and his map collection may interest you.

John Feathers was born in Massachusetts into a military family. He worked for many years in a local hospital as a dietitian. Mr. Feathers lived in a house in an area of Los Angeles called Mount Washington.  The house was a 90 year old cottage built in the rural feeling hills of a forgotten part of Los Angeles. Mr. Feathers had been the home owner Walter Keller’s long time companion. When Keller died he was granted residency of the house. He lived there for nearly 20 years alone.  Feathers died recently leaving no heirs. The house is owned by Mr. Keller’s heirs.  Sadly the house is what is known in LA as a tear down. The land is not just too valuable for a 90 year old cottage in questionable shape to have any value.  Real estate agent Matthew Greenberg was given the task of taking care of the house and preparing it for demolition so the lot could be subdivided.  This is when he Mr. Greenberg made the discovery of Mr. Feathers map collection. In the small cottage there were in the vicinity of one million maps.  Greenberg could have just called for a dumpster and had all the maps thrown out but he knew it wouldn’t be the right thing to do. He did the smart thing and called the Los Angeles Public Library. Greenberg invited its map librarian, Glen Creason, to Mount Washington to look at the trove. . "I think there are at least a million maps here," he said. "This dwarfs our collection — and we've been collecting for 100 years." Creason expects that cataloging and organizing the maps will take as long as a year. "We may have to apply for a grant to sort through the fold-out maps and ask for help from the Library of Congress. The collection will take up about 600 feet of shelving," he said.

Barry Ruderman an antiquarian from La Jolla was called in but could not put a monetary figure on the collection yet. He did root around an discovered a circa 1592 map of Europe.

Mr. Feathers didn’t only collect maps he also had hotel soaps, matchbooks and every National Geographic from 1915 to the current day.

 

Is this collecting or is it hoarding? It is hard to say.