Key map showing which areas of Philadelphia are covered by which numbered, standard Sanborn Co. fire insurance map volumes for the city.

More-or-less essential starting point for using the Sanborn maps in printed or digital form.

Harvard Map Collection Digitizes Historic Cambridge and Boston Atlases

September 6, 2007 - The Harvard Map Collection's atlases of historic Cambridge have much to reveal about the city and the University's past. Looking at these oversized documents, for instance, one learns that 135 years ago, Harvard students boarded their horses in the University stables where current day John Harvard's Brew House operates and that as of 1903 the John Harvard statue sat, not outside University Hall, but by Memorial Hall. Now the Map Collection has made it easier for those researching local history to use its Boston and Cambridge atlases by digitizing these volumes and making them available online to the public.

“The two kinds of atlases we’ve recently digitized for Cambridge and Boston are called fire insurance and land ownership atlases,” says David Cobb, Curator of the Harvard Map Collection. “They’re unique and very significant, and they really provide far more detail than the regular maps of Cambridge and Boston.”

The Penn Library's new subscription to the Digital Sanborn maps: Pennsylvania provides online access to black-and-white reproductions of fire insurance maps produced by the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company for 586 Pennsylvania communities from the late 19th century through the early 1950s. These maps show streets, building outlines, and other improvements and infrastructure for urban communities.

The online collection, arranged in atlas volumes searchable by county, community, and date, covers all major Pennsylvania cities - Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, Allentown, Scranton, Reading, Bristol, Lancaster, Bethlehem, Harrisburg, and Altoona - as well as many smaller places - Scalp Level, Shickshinny, Jersey Shore, Black Lick, and Throop.