Maplab
The Accidental Revelations of Sanborn Maps
How maps created for fire insurers show the evolution of cities.
Sanborn maps are crowded with detail and color. So is their history.
Daniel A. Sanborn created these maps for one, very specific (and kind of dry) reason: to provide insurers a catalogue of city structures that could be fire risks. But over the years, these maps came to serve another purpose. Flipping through a series of maps of the same location, you can see mushrooming buildings, shops, and churches and deduce who lived, worked, and prayed in these structures. So, apart from insurance companies, historians, genealogists, and scholars started looking them them up for the moving pictures of urban growth that they offered.