Culver 1937 Sanborn Fire Map  

Fire insurance maps are the most detailed historical records of the urban landscape. From 1790 to 1961, nearly every U.S. town and city with populations of 2,000 or more, had been surveyed. During this timeframe, over 13,000 U.S. cities were mapped by fire insurance map publishers. Shown on these maps, sometimes in great detail, are virtually every building, man-made structure and business standing at the time the survey was made.

Initially, the maps were known only to a handful of fire insurance underwriters. But by 1937, practically every insurance company in the country relied on the maps to balance the financial risks of the properties that they insured. Today, although the uses for fire insurance maps have grown far beyond their original purpose, few people are aware of the wide range of applications for which they are being used.

Environmental assessment, architectural renovation and reconstruction, and corporate research are but a few of the uses drawing professionals and hobbyists to the pages of these intriguing maps.

While the legacy of the maps is quickly becoming the diversity of applications for which they can be used, the history of the maps and those who made them is one of the best-kept cartographic secrets.

This set of Sandborn maps contained 5 pages - These are PDF links and require that you have adobe reader to be able to read them and take a while to load up - they are large - but they can be enlarged to read - I found 400% was ideal was ideal with out loss of clarity for research work.

Page One - Sections: Palmer House, Key & Scott, Toner Avenue
Page Two - Downtown
Page Three - S. Main (Madison - Daviess) Jungle Hotel Sections
Page Four - S. Main (Daviess - ?), Sections
Page Five - Academy

These pages contain crops from these maps:

Academy

Lakeshore Dr. (Scott & Toner Avenue)

This is the "Key" to the Sanborn Map and shows the enitre town corporation limits:


These are one block crops of the downtown area:












This page is a crop of the downtown in full as representing only the East and West side of Main Street as represented by the individual block crops above.

Full downtown area

South Main

Hotels

Ice Houses

There are Sanbron maps for Indiana as follows - Includes 91 cities dated 1933 - 1980 (13 reels). ISBN 1-55655-340-4. This was LexisNexis® For Academic & Faculty Librarians - UPA Collections; Research Collections in Urban History & Urban Studies Fire Insurance Maps from the Sanborn Map Company Archives: Late 19th Century to 1994.

The Sanborn maps are also at Indiana University Bloomington; insight into the Sanborn Fire maps can be found at the Library of Congress from the Berkley University website.

Sanborn Fire Maps 1906, 1914, 1924, 1937 (dtd 1924) Sanborn Map Company 1935 Jamboree Drive Suite 100 Colorado Springs, CO 80920. Maps for 1866-1923 Contact: The Library of Congress, public record, no copyright permission required. Maps for 1924-1979 Contact: Sanborn Sister Company: EDR @ 1-800-624-0470 or Enviormental Data Resources Inc. 440 Wheelers Farms Road Milford, CT 06461 Phone: 1-800-352-0050 or e-mail: historicmaps@edrnet.com; Maps for 1980-2007 Contact: Sanborn Mapping & Geographic 629 Fifth Ave Ste 3 Pelham, NY 10803 Phone: 1-800-930-3298. - - Sanborn Use Agreement