New York City, Staten Island, NY. Atlas 159, 1885
Charleston, SC 1888
Watsonville, CA 1888
NEW YORK Brooklyn, NY 1888
Trenton, NJ 1890
Annapolis, MD 1891
Louisville, KY 1892
Allegheny, PA 1893
Greenville, SC 1893
Montpelier, VT 1893
Milwaukee, WI 1894
Montpelier, KY 1897
Indianapolis, IN 1898
Greenville, SC 1898
New York City, Richmond, NY 1898
Greenville, SC 1902
Washington, DC 1903
New York City, Manhattan, NY 1905
Mexico City, Mexico 1905
Richmond, VA 1905
Greenville, SC 1908
Allentown, PA 1911
Leavenworth, KS 1913
Greenville, SC 1913
Indianapolis, IN 1915
Columbia, SC 1919
Greenville, SC 1920
Beaver Falls, PA 1921
Alexandria, VA 1921
This article is the second part of a series of articles about Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. You’ll find the first one here: The typography of Sanborn New York City maps.
Once I knew where to look I found a lot of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. When I started comparing them I noticed the variety of logo/wordmark designs. Displayed above are 30 examples, but it could have been easily been 100.
Which proves designers were either crazy, passionate about design, or were paid a lot of money to come up with a different design every time.
The wordmarks aren’t as instantly recognizable as a logo is supposed to be today, but they certainly are impressive. Especially when compared to their current logo.
EDIT: I’ve started adding large images to two Gimmebar collections:
Sanborn Map Company typography and lettering + Sanborn Map Company details.
Allentown 1911 vs. Greenville 1920
The “Sanborn Map Company” wordmark from the 1911 Allentown map has been recycled on the 1920 Greenville map.
The Sanborn Map Company
Sanborn Map Company began creating fire insurance maps in 1867. They were created to assist insurance agencies in assessing the fire risk of properties. Detailed maps, showing building use, sidewalk and street widths, layout and names, property boundaries, distance between buildings, house and block numbers, location of water mains, hydrants, piping, wells, cisterns, and fuel storage tanks. Maps were often updated by pasting new drawings directly over the original ones.
Other sources: high quality maps
I’ll update this list as soon as I find more websites with high quality scans. Most websites are from libraries and universities.
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These are killer! Golden Black has a great vector set inspired by these Sanborn Map designs!
http://thegoldenblack.com/product/sanborn-vector-set/
I knew about Sanborn maps but didn’t realize the company’s logo changed so frequently! Thanks for sharing.
To find Sanborn maps of what a particular area looked like in the past, call the reference section of the largest library in your area. At least in the U.S., libraries often subscribe to PDF version of the maps for the surrounding city or county.