Virginia Digital Sanborn Maps Now Available from UMI
University of Virginia faculty, students, and staff now have web access to the Virginia Digital Sanborn Maps collection of Bell and Howell/UMI. This website provides easy access to most of the maps of Virginia produced by the Sanborn Map Company, beginning in the mid-1880s and concluding around 1950. These digital images were produced from microfilm of Sanborn atlases deposited at the Library of Congress, or transferred there by the Bureau of the Census.
The Digital Sanborn Maps collection may be accessed at <http://sanborn.umi.com>.
A detailed user guide for the Digital Sanborn Maps collection is included below.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps were drawn to assist agents in risk-assesment for areas with high property value. For contemporary scholars, they provide a highly-detailed account of urban development and change in American communities during the early twentieth century. Sanborn maps are large-scale and depict street layouts, building footprints, building materials, utility lines and other details.
Although the original atlases were produced in color, the Digital Sanborn Map collection is in black and white because of their microfilm source. Image clarity, however, is quite good and the images are available for printing and downloading in PDF format. A brief essay on the history of Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps is available on the web at <http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/sanborn/about.html>.
The Digital Sanborn Map website complements other Sanborn map collections at the University of Virginia Library:
- The Albert H. Small Special Collections Library holds the original atlases of Charlottesville from 1920 and 1907, as well as several other small Virginia communities, which are available for viewing upon request.
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The Geostat Center, in cooperation with Special Collections, has digitized the 1920 Sanborn maps of Charlottesville in full color and constructed a searchable website at <http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/sanborn/> for their use. A website for the 1907 edition of the Charlottesville Sanborn maps is planned.
- The Government Information Department of Alderman Library holds the microfilm collection from the Library of Congress from which this web resource is based. Its collection also includes Washington, DC Consult <http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/sanbornbin/main.pl?microfilm=on> for a searchable index of the collection to find appropriate reel numbers. NOTE: There are two separate collections of microfilm for Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. Those labeled "Chadwyck Healy" are the reels on which the Digital Sanborn Map collection is based; those labeled "University Publications of America" are NOT included in the collection.
A detailed user guide to this web site is appended below. For questions regarding this resource, contact <geostat@virginia.edu>.
Using the UMI Sanborn Website: Step-by-Step
Let's say we were interested in Danville in the 1920s. Here's a step-by-step example of how we would find and retrieve the appropriate map.
Finding a Map
- From the main page of the collection, <
http://sanborn.umi.com/>, select "Browse Maps" under
the introductory paragraph. A series of scroll-down menus will subsequently
appear. The first asks users to select a state, but only Virginia
will appear.
- Once Virginia is selected by clicking on the word, select a city
from the scroll-down menu. Click on Danville.
- Clicking on a city finally reveals a date scroll-down menu, which
displays the editions produced for that city or town. Click on 1920.
Selecting a date brings a user to a screen depicting up to 25 thumbnail
images of the map sheets. Click on 1920--25 thumbnails of Danville's
1920 atlas will appear. Map sheets beyond the first 25 can be displayed
by clicking on "Next" or selecting a map sheet number from the scroll-down
menu at the bottom of the page.
- Consult the edition's index map before searching for a particular
urban location. Index maps display the entire city (or the portion of
the city contained within that volume) and label city blocks with numbers
that correspond with their sheet number. Index maps are always in the
beginning of a map collection, so they will be among the first sheets
listed. They can be identified in the thumbnail collection as the only
map that shows the entire city and the only map that also contains the
atlas key. In our example, the Danville index is sheet 0c.
- Some dates are listed twice indicating one atlas held by
the Census Bureau and one by the Library of Congress. Census Bureau
maps are indicated by an asterisk (*). Corrections between editions
were pasted onto these maps and not on maps held by the Library
of Congress, so they are not identical. A map edition that shows
a brief range of years means that the maps took that period of time
to produce. Maps with longer ranges indicate pasted-on corrections
were made to that map over that period of time from when it was
first produced.
- Some dates are listed twice indicating one atlas held by
the Census Bureau and one by the Library of Congress. Census Bureau
maps are indicated by an asterisk (*). Corrections between editions
were pasted onto these maps and not on maps held by the Library
of Congress, so they are not identical. A map edition that shows
a brief range of years means that the maps took that period of time
to produce. Maps with longer ranges indicate pasted-on corrections
were made to that map over that period of time from when it was
first produced.
- For large cities maps are divided into multiple volumes for
a particular publication year. If a year's edition had to be broken
into volumes, a new scroll-down menu will appear at the top of the
thumbnail page. Volumes are organized geographically, so consult the
index map at the beginning of each volume to note what portions of
a city are represented by what volume. Insert maps on index maps display
areas covered by volumes.
- At any time a user can change the city, date, or volume number
of the Sanborn maps displayed by clicking on the scroll-down menus
at the top of the thumbnail page. Help with the page and collection
is also available at the header present on all pages in the web collection.
- Editors notes, listed from the Library of Congress' published index of Sanborn maps in its collection, appear in a pop-up window if a user clicks on the "Editor's Note" link at the top of the page. Usually, these notes indicate when other nearby towns or suburbs have been included in a Sanborn edition.
Displaying and working with the maps
Continuing with our Danville example, let's say we're most interested in areas around the riverfront.
- To find the apprpropriate map sheet, click on the index map
on sheet 0c . Every time a thumbnail is clicked, a new window opens
displaying that map sheet instead of reloading a single window.
- To enlarge the display window, select a larger blue box from
the "select window size" option. This will make the display area larger,
but you may have to increase your browser window accordingly. There
are two ways to navigate around the display window: by clicking on the
arrows on the four sides of the box, or by clicking on the re-center
button at the top of the box. When re-center is selected, clicking on
a point in the window will redraw the image with the selected point
at the center. One can also zoom in on the image using the scroll-down
menu or the zoom button on the top of the window. Use both of these
tools to get a closer look at the waterfront area of Danville.
- Select a map sheet using the thumbnail or scrolling menu. For
our purposes, let's say we're most interested in sheet 29. Minimize
the index map and take a look at the thumbnail page. Since sheet 29
is not displayed, we can select it by clicking on it in the scroll-down
menu at the bottom of the thumbnail page. A new viewing window will
open with just sheet 29 in it. The window with sheet 0c in it, the index
map, will not close or be reloaded, allowing us to look at several sheets
at once.
- One can download the map as a .PDF file by clicking "Download
Map" from the title bar menu. The PDF formatted file will open in a
new web browser window. To save it, click on the disk in the toolbar,
or click File> Save As from the file menu of the web browser.
- PDFs can be opened in Photoshop versions 5 and higher and
further manipulated or printed. To open a downloaded Sanborn image
in Photoshop click on File > Open As and specify "Generic PDF"
as the type of file.
- PDFs can be opened in Photoshop versions 5 and higher and
further manipulated or printed. To open a downloaded Sanborn image
in Photoshop click on File > Open As and specify "Generic PDF"
as the type of file.
- One can also print the mapfrom the view window by clicking
"Print Current View" from the title bar menu. This function captures
the image as shown in the view window and transfers it to a new browser
window, from which it can be printed. Only the portion of the image
shown will be printed, so this function is suitable either for printing
small images of the full map sheet or a zoomed-in image of just a portion
of a map sheet.
- It may be necessary to re-center the image using the re-center
tool in the window before printing. Selecting the size of the window
by clicking on the blue boxes above the window will also affect the
area captured for printing, so it may take some experimentation to capture
exactly the area one wants to print.
- A black and white key for use with these maps is available within the Digital Sanborn Map website, accessible directly at: <http://sanborn.umi.com/HelpFiles/bwkey.pdf>.
For further assistance
For questions regarding this resource, contact <geostat@virginia.edu>.