| ▲ | Old Insurance Maps – Georeferencing Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps on Modern Maps(oldinsurancemaps.net) |
| 55 points by lapetitejort 8 days ago | 13 comments |
| |
|
| ▲ | okok3857 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I developed and maintain this site so I am both very happy to see it get posted here and also watching htop intently... I wanted to point out it is a crowdsourcing project, so every overlaid page you see has been placed there by a person, often through large institutional efforts at universities, but also individuals just looking to learn about their hometown through these old maps. Thanks for the interest! |
| |
| ▲ | dmd 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Do you use IIIF for this? Do you know about https://allmaps.org/ ? | |
| ▲ | garciansmith 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Thanks for making this, I look at Sanborns all the time doing historic preservation-related work. Is there a way to quickly search for a specific address or select a point and then see the relevant map? Larger cities have Sanborns covering many volumes, and I see I can use sliders to turn them on and off to find the relevant one, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a quicker way of finding a specific address. | | |
| ▲ | okok3857 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Great question: no. I've spent a lot more time making the georeferencing side of things work well than improving search and discovery, and even presentation (like the /viewer/ pages), of the maps on the site. It's something I hope to spend a lot more time on in the coming months. I know, dealing with those sliders is pretty cumbersome in big cities with many volumes (like SF). | | |
| ▲ | garciansmith 44 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Gotcha, no problem, just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing some obvious way. Still a super useful tool, thanks again. |
|
| |
| ▲ | selimthegrim 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Hi Adam! Adam runs really fun events where you get to help him annotate the maps if you’re ever in the New Orleans area | | |
|
|
| ▲ | lapetitejort 8 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Sanborn Fire Insurance maps document cities in extreme detail. Not only are the positions and shapes of buildings accurately mapped, but also rough outlines of the rooms, their construction materials, and even small details like if the building hired a night watchman. See downtown San Fracisco for example: https://oldinsurancemaps.net/viewer/san-francisco-ca/?sanbor... |
| |
| ▲ | devilbunny 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Also a major plot point in Peng Shepherd's novel The Cartographers. Not a marvelous novel (though it's far better than anything I could write), but entertaining enough and an easy read. | |
| ▲ | Forgeties79 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They’re super fun to look at if you have live in an historic home. |
|
|
| ▲ | jojohack 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Thanks for sharing. I went through a similar process recently, manually stitching together fire insurance maps from my hometown. A large part of the business district burned down in 1916, but maps from a couple of years earlier survived. It worked, but it was tedious. This would have saved a lot of time. Here's the link if anyone wants to check it out: https://fire.gorch.com/ |
|
| ▲ | chiffre01 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Clicking on a lot of the maps gives me this ? I'm logged in as well Unauthorized: You do not have access to this item. |
| |
| ▲ | okok3857 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, there are a number of maps (the FHA ones and also one Sanborn) that are part of a research project that is still in the works, so they are hidden for now. |
|
