Sanborn Fire Insurance maps of Fargo, North Dakota [1922]

Item

Identifier: Mss 1565

Staff Only

Scope and Content

The 1922 atlas (Mss 1565) contains thirty-seven pages covering the entire city. The volume was originally owned by W. J. Lane Company, a Fargo real estate and insurance company. The title page includes a street and selected business index as well as a map of Fargo keyed to the individual maps. Accompanying the atlas is a booklet, Description and Utilization of The Sanborn Map, published in 1940 by the Sanborn Map Company. It is a very informative booklet on how to read and utilize the maps. In includes a key to the colors and symbols used. There are also narrative description examples for portions of two accompanying maps.

Dates

1922.

Creator

Sanborn Map Company. (Organization)

Access

The collection is open under the rules and regulations of the NDSU Archives.

Copyrights

Copyrights to this collection are not held by the NDSU Archives.

History

Insurance maps and plans originated in London toward the end of the 18th Century in response to the need felt by large fire insurance companies and underwriters for accurate, current, and detailed information about the buildings they were insuring. A London company, Phoenix Assurance Company, extended its coverage to include the United States by the 1790s. George T. Hope is generally credited from having fostered the idea of specialized and detailed fire insurance maps in the United States. Around 1849 or 1850 Hope, who was at the time secretary of the Jefferson Insurance Company in New York City, began to compile a large-scale map of a portion of New York City for use in calculating fire risks on business and residential structures. Other American companies followed Hope's lead with additional maps made for other American cities.

D.A. Sanborn, a young surveyor from Somerville, Massachusetts, was engaged in 1866 by Aetna Insurance Company to prepare insurance maps for several cities in Tennessee. Before working for Aetna, Sanborn conducted surveys and compiled an atlas of the city of Boston. The success of the Boston atlas and the commission from Aetna must have impressed Sanborn, for after the work in Tennessee he established the D.A. Sanborn National Insurance Diagram Bureau in New York City in 1867. From this modest beginning grew the specialized company that has compiled and published maps of more than 12,000 American towns and cities for insurance companies for more than a hundred years.

D.A. Sanborn died in 1883. The company he founded, however, continued to grow. In 1899 it acquired the Perris and Browne firm and can by virtue of this expansion date its origins to 1852. The firm name established by Sanborn in 1867 was changed in 1876 when the firm was incorporated under the name Sanborn Map and Publishing Company, which then became the Sanborn Perris Map Company, Ltd., until, in 1902, the name was shortened to the Sanborn Map Company, the form which the company uses today.

By 1920 Sanborn virtually monopolized the insurance map industry. The company had only two or three small competitors, including Walter I. Fisher who, operated in Minneapolis as the General Inspection Bureau, published insurance maps of more than 640 towns in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota between 1907 and the 1960s.

Extent

1 Items (1 item (37 p.).)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

City maps of Fargo, N.D., originally owned by W.J. Lane Co. of Fargo. Maps were created for insurance purposes. Maps show placement, size, and construction material of all buildings with notes as to location of city water mains, includes street names and subdevelopment names and various pencil notations. Buildings are color coded according to use.