Change over Time...

Maps are from Sanborn Fire Map Collection UMI

1883

SANBORN MAPS and CITY DIRECTORIES - INTRODUCTION

ON MAPS

DR. CARLETON'S Lecture at UT Austin, November 6, 2001

"Geography is indispensable to history… situating us in space as well as in time.." (From David E. Kyvig, and Myron A Marty's,.Nearby History: Exploring the Past around You. 2nd ed. Walnut Creek, CA : AltaMira Press, c2000)

Maps are representations of parts of the earth’s curved surface as depicted on flat sheets of paper.

Maps are primary sources when we take information directly from the map. Maps can be used as an analytic process, when we use maps to compare and contrast information.

Different societies have organized land in different ways For instance, the French used long lots in Louisiana to guarantee landholders access to the Mississippi for transportation was largely by river then. The English land division is regular square blocks surrounding a central town space. The Spanish have use many different shapes.

The U.S. Federal township system was a codified way of distributing land based on an ordinance of 1785 (one of the first significant laws passed by the U.S.) The Federal township system codified the use of the gridiron. The gridiron is the dominant template used by cities in the U.S. Gridirons are efficient and expandable.

Maps are used as sources for urban and economic history. You can find maps on letterheads, broadsides, city directories, business atlases, etc. Urban lithographic views also called birds eye views were pre-photographic representations of the city environment, from above, at an oblique angle. They were not made to scale but they can convey the quality of a city arrangement.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps began in 1867. After the Civil War, insurance companies needed to assess the relative dangers at a distance and so sent cartographers to make maps indicating building materials and locations of areas requiring fire insurance. These maps at first included residential areas, but after the introduction of trolleys (in the 1870-80's) most residences were separated from commercial districts and the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps from that point on mostly represent commercial areas.

The Sanborn Maps can be considered as cultural history sources when combined with the information we can gather from City Directories. (Note: an excellent example of a study of El Paso Chinatown that uses City Directories and the Sandborn Maps to trace the history of the Chinese population in El Paso, is El Paso's Chinatown by Carry Beverly.)

Excerpts from lecture by Dr. Don Carleton, Director of the Center for American History, UT Austin.

ON FIRE

DON MARTINDALES' PREFATORY REMARKS TO MAX WEBER'S THE CITY

After a dramatic series of fires [in the U.S.] (the estimated total fire losses in 1878 were over sixty-four million, by 1882 they passed one hundred million dollars, by 1890 over one hundred fifty million), more efficient fire fighting systems, the introduction of new fire fighting. (p. 14)

ON SANBORN FIRE INSURANCE MAPS

THE FOLLOWING... is extracted from Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress;

"Tracing the development and growth of cities and towns has been a popular study in recent years. Fortunately for the researcher on such a quest, the cartographic collections of the Library of Congress contain thousands of maps and atlases of urban areas, dating from as far back as the sixteenth century up to the present.

Of particular note among the Library's holdings is an extensive collection of maps of American cities and towns, giving detailed, accurate information about their buildings and other structures.

The Sanborn Map Company of Pelham, New York, produced many such maps. The Sanborn map collection consists of a uniform series of large-scale maps, dating from 1867 to the present and depicting the commercial, industrial, and residential sections of some twelve thousand cities and towns in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The maps were designed to assist fire insurance agents in determining the degree of hazard associated with a particular property and therefore show the size, shape, and construction of dwellings, commercial buildings, and factories as well as fire
walls, locations of windows and doors, sprinkler systems, and types of roofs.

The maps also indicate widths and names of streets, property boundaries, building use, and
house and block numbers. They show the locations of water mains, giving their dimensions, and of fire alarm boxes and hydrants. Sanborn maps are thus an unrivaled source of information about the structure and use of buildings in American cities.

The Sanborn collection includes some fifty thousand editions of fire insurance maps comprising an estimated seven hundred thousand individual sheets. The Library of Congress holdings represent the largest extant collection of maps produced by the Sanborn Map Company."

Notes from: GEOSTAT: GEOSPATIAL AND STATISTICAL DATA CENTER;

"How to Read Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps -- Sanborn maps use a shorthand of colors and symbols to represent a wealth of information. Although many Sanborn maps were hand-drawn and colored, they all use a standard scheme related in keys found in every map folio. Though new symbols were added as technology changed, most symbols remained constant since the founding of the Sanborn Company in the late 1800s.

Most Sanborn Maps are scaled one inch for 50 feet (1:600) on sheets 21 inches by 25 inches, although many maps are also scaled to 100 feet per inch (1:1200). Surveyors worked first from court documents and real estate notes, but were encouraged to survey areas themselves if documentation did not present itself easily.

Only built-up parts of towns were surveyed. Often, Sanborn surveyors ignored sections of town not of interest to fire insurers, namely poor or predominantly African-American residential areas. Therefore, Sanborn maps often do not record an entire city or town.

There are several layers of labeling on Sanborn Maps that apply to a number of urban features important for insurers.

First, city areas are divided into numerous sheets, which appear on specific pages as designated by an index map...

City blocks ... were often assigned numbers that appear on individual sheets, and which can facilitate comparison across a series of maps. If block numbering changed from one map edition to another, numbers in parentheses indicate old block numbers that have changed from previous map editions.

Under streets, Sanborn maps indicate where and what type of water and gas manes exist, including those for fire fighting, with their hydrants

Buildings on Sanborn Maps have their own elaborate system of symbols as well. A color code designates the type of material from which a building was constructed. Green or gray indicates fireproof or adobe construction, blue a stone or concrete structure, red a brick structure, gray an iron structure, and yellow a wood frame structure. Brick or stone veneers are also noted by colors, and buildings with mixed construction materials are labeled blue and have notation as to their materials on the drawing itself.

Building types:
a fireproof building
a stone building
a brick building with notations for windows, a skylight, wall thicknesses, and an interior fire wall
building of mixed construction (stone and brick)
a wood frame with an iron facade
a wood frame building

Skylights, windows, fire escapes, the thickness of walls, garages, elevators, sprinkler systems, asbestos shingles, and building height are all commonly noted on building drawings as well.
a fire escape
skylights
a fire door

Buildings are also labeled as to their function. Civic or prominent buildings like schools, theatres, churches, businesses and offices are often named on Sanborn Maps. For those not named outright, the letter D indicates a dwelling, F a flat, S a store, and A an auto garage. Often notes like "Apts" for apartments will also appear. a dwelling

A variety of more specific notations often appear in drawings as well, most pertaining to facts that would pertain to a buildings tolerance to fire, as these maps were intended for use by fire insurance companies first and foremost.

Excerpts from GEOSTAT: GEOSPATIAL AND STATISTICAL DATA CENTER