Legal Research

MPL's Sanborn Maps Offer Property Level Detail for WI Communities from 1867-1970

The Milwaukee Public Library has recently acquired the Digital Sanborn Atlases which contains very detailed, large-scale maps of Wisconsin towns and cities from 1867-1970.

The maps were created by the Sanborn Map Company for fire insurance purposes. They detail buildings and their construction materials and were used to assess potential risk from fire and other hazards. The maps also give street names, street and sidewalk widths, property boundaries, building use, and house and block numbers. Today these maps are a great source of historical data for urban specialists, social historians, architects, geographers, genealogists, local historians, planners, environmentalists, or anyone wishing to track the development of a community, neighborhood or particular property over time.

City of Milwaukee Public Library users can access this database remotely with your library card. Others can uses the database on-site at the library.

From Now @ MPL

Full post as published by WisBlawg - From the UW Law Library on November 01, 2010 (boomark / email).