25 September 2008

Sanborn Maps as a resource


It turns out that Princeton U's Library has posted a pretty significant collection of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps.

While the collection of New Jersey maps is fairly extensive, it isn't all scanned yet. The key to using this for much of New Jersey is that you have to first download their excel spreadsheet and click on the link for the appropriate set of Sanborn maps.

I've posted my photos of Sanborn maps from the Library of Congress map vault. The top photo shows some red brick buildings near the blue stone construction of Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. You can even see that the area behind home plate was brick construction, which shows in some of the photos. The maps are great because they are so detailed and help track change over time.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi-
I am studying for my masters of architecture at Parsons in Manhattan. I am researching for my thesis and was wondering if you knew of a good resource for Brooklyn sandborn maps (digital or physical) I am heading over to the NY public library but i was just wondering if you had any thoughts. any help would be apprecited.
Best-
Jon

David Tulloch said...

Actually, the first thing that sprang to mind was the NY Public Library. I would also wonder about the map collection at Columbia. I strongly suspect that someone in NYC has a soild publicly-accessible collection, but I don't know who it is.

If it is important, you might seriously consider a train ride to DC to look at the LoC. Or you might see what the Sanborn company can provide.