{"id":17,"date":"2012-03-12T12:05:52","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T17:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/forms.lib.uiowa.edu\/maps\/sanborn-fire-insurance-maps-for-iowas-cities-and-towns\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T10:06:11","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T16:06:11","slug":"sanbornmaps","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/maps\/sanbornmaps\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for Iowa’s Cities and Towns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fire-insurance maps are a very useful tool for local historians, demographers, city planners, genealogists, and anyone studying the history of an urban area. These fire-insurance maps were developed by the Sanborn Company in the latter part of the 19th century for the purpose of showing fire hazards for each building in a town. In addition to Sanborn, two other makers of fire insurance maps are represented in this microfiche collection: the Bennett Company and the Iowa Insurance Bureau. These commercial agencies did extremely detailed work on the mapping and updating of the buildings in towns of all sizes, making it possible for researchers to look back at changes in a building, a street block, or a neighborhood over a number of years.<\/p>\n

Some types of information that can be found on these maps include: building construction details (building materials, number of stories, elevators and stairs, date of construction); building use details (building name, commercial or residential, type of business located on the premises); location details (current address, past addresses, alleyways and prominent natural features); and land use details (parks, railroad tracks, underground pipes, street widths, land elevations).<\/p>\n

Please\u00a0contact\u00a0Special Collections staff<\/a>\u00a0for assistance with any of the following resources.<\/p>\n

Online<\/strong><\/p>\n

UI Affiliates:<\/em>\u00a0Persons affiliated with the University of Iowa have access to\u00a0ProQuest\u2019s Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970<\/a>\u00a0(UI access only\"Restricted) covering the entire nation.<\/p>\n

State Library of Iowa affiliates:<\/em>\u00a0The State Library of Iowa makes\u00a0Iowa Sanborn maps available online<\/a>\u00a0for anyone with a State Library of Iowa card.<\/p>\n

Microfiche<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fire insurance maps for more than 1000 Iowa cities are available to the public on microfiche in the Map Collection at the University of Iowa Main Library. The microfiche set, compiled in the early 1980s, contains reproductions of Iowa fire insurance maps held at the Library of Congress, the University of Iowa, and the State Historical Society offices in both Des Moines and Iowa City. Time periods covered for the available cities range mainly from the 1870s to the 1960s.\u00a0The Map Collection also owns a 1970 map on microfiche for Iowa City. For more information on the Iowa filming project, and more information on each map (e.g., source library for fiche copy, preparer of map), see\u00a0Fire insurance maps of Iowa cities and towns: a list of holdings<\/em>\u00a0by Peter H. Curtis (Iowa City, Iowa: Iowa State Historical Dept., Office of the State Historical Society, 1983).<\/p>\n

Paper<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sanborn maps of Iowa dating from the 1870s through the 1930s are available on paper.<\/p>\n

Fire Insurance Maps Outside of Iowa<\/strong><\/p>\n

A listing of libraries holding specific Sanborn and other insurance maps for Iowa and other states, including information regarding maps that have been digitized, is available on UC Berkeley Earth Sciences & Map Library\u2019s site<\/a>. Some of the linked sites include images of the Sanborn maps.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Updated: Jan. 6, 2014 by M. Gamm \u2022\u00a0 L.Carpenter, Reference and Library Instruction including information and reference services, government documents, and maps.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sanborn Maps at The University of Iowa Libraries Map Collection<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"pagetpl-maps.php","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/maps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/maps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/maps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/maps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/maps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/maps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351,"href":"https:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/maps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17\/revisions\/351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/maps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/maps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/maps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}