Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Collection (Video)
Experience the future of the Tulane University Digital Library.
We invite you to visit the new Digital Collections website.
- [Music]
- Hi, I’m Kevin Williams, coordinator for exhibits and outreach for Tulane University
- Special Collections, a division of Tulane University Libraries and I’d like to share
- with you the only known copy of the 1876 New Orleans Sanborn Fire Insurance Map.
- Starting in 1867, the Sanborn Company published maps for some twelve thousand cities and towns
- across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
- The maps assisted fire insurance agents by recording the size, shape, and construction
- of buildings as defined by elaborate color-coded keys.
- The first year they published for New Orleans was 1876.
- Here you can see the footprint of the French Opera House, and learn that it was located
- at Bourbon and Toulouse Streets, was a masonry building, that it had 3-5 stories for each
- section, and even note that it had iron shutters.
- The maps also record the block number, original addresses, and street name changes, which
- is especially important for New Orleans, where the names of streets have changed so often.
- We can also learn more about Tulane University’s first campus, including the fact that the
- Sanborn Company called it Louisiana University, when it was actually the University of Louisiana.
- The map also shows that is was located on Common Street, and consisted of three buildings—including
- medical and law departments and a library, and note that the buildings had wood cornices.
- Sanborn maps are heavily used today by architects, historians, and preservationists, which is
- why the Library of Congress has put them online, but not even the Library of Congress has this
- one.
- But never fear, this only known copy of the 1876 New Orleans Sanborn map is freely available
- to everyone, online, via the Tulane Digital Library at digital library dot tulane dot
- edu.
- [Music]