Talk:Sanborn maps

Untitled
Some new aerial photos for Google Earth for cities such as New York City are "(c) Sanborn" - is this the same company?
 * Yes, they are one and the same. See Sanborn's website. --Qsheets (talk) 04:22, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Company is still around
This article reads as a historical piece about a company that continues to exist. Recommend updating with new information about company or making it completely about the fire insurance maps and adding/linking to a new page about the company itself. --Qsheets (talk) 04:22, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

No mention of the title page art c. 1900?
This article may be doing the subject a disservice by neglecting to mention the feature of these historic maps that in recent years has attracted broad interest: The artistic value of their title pages.

The page on the Library of Congress site containing introductory material about its collection of Sanborn maps has scant mention of the title pages, but does say that the ones included with "large-city maps issued in one or more volumes" are often "a visual delight of ornate typography and design."

In particular, the ones published around the turn of the last century, and for a few decades after, feature the hand-lettered and engraved name of a city and the words "Sanborn Map Publishing Co." in an intricate, dimensional style that seems to carry that art nouveau calligraphy to levels far beyond the usual whiskey bottles and tavern signage with which the style is generally associated. Starting out as the fancy bugs on Page 1 of each city's map, these later came to occupy an entire page by themselves, and as the 20th century progressed, it is evident in the lettering style, which became less florid and more spiky (though maintaining the artist's painstaking attention to detail) as the art deco influence continuted to percolate through American culture. Saltcub (talk) 10:29, 12 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Assertions in the article must cite reliable sources. If you can do that, notable facts about the artwork would be a valuable addition. Vzeebjtf (talk) 10:42, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Correction slips & modern map use
". Between editions of published volumes, map updates were sent out as correction slips. Sanborn employees, called "pasters" or "correctors", would visit subscribers' offices to paste the slips on top of the old maps." - Unfortunately for historians, the slips were not dated, so, while changes in a building can be seen by carefully looking through layers of slips, the dates of the changes are not specified.

Changed date
Changed date of acquisition of Perris and Browne from 1889 to 1889. MapsOnFire (talk) 15:15, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I think you mean 1899 to 1889. Vzeebjtf (talk) 21:00, 16 August 2022 (UTC)


 * This was actually not a Wikipedia typo. it was a correct copy of a typo in the source: Walter Ristow's introduction to Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress, 1981. MapsOnFire (talk) 15:24, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
 * We need a source for this. Vzeebjtf (talk) 21:00, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Done. Vzeebjtf (talk) 21:23, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Broadway
The maps were published on Broadway in Manhattan (at 115, 117 and 11 for ones I've checked). May be worth mentioning in the article. Seasider53 (talk) 00:08, 17 February 2024 (UTC)