The Sanborn Insurance Company was organized in 1866 by Daniel Alfred Sanborn, a civil engineer. He was contracted by Aetna Insurance to make maps of Tennessee towns. Within a couple of decades, the company became the largest map company in America, eventually buying out all competition in the insurance map domain.
The company made its first map of Fayetteville in 1886. The maps are printed line drawings of streets and buildings, primarily, and various hand-painted colors, symbols and notations were added post printing to differentiate between wood, stone and brick structures; number of floors; potential dangers such as a forge or kiln; nearby water line routes; and more. The red buildings in the map above, for instance, were those built of brick.
The buildings here are color-coded:
- Blue — Public buildings
- Gold — Residential dwellings
- Green — Hotels, boarding houses and tenements
- Brown — Retail shops and professional offices
- Gray — Manufacturing services and other non-descript buildings
Addresses listed with buildings were assigned by the Sanborn Insurance Co. and bear little or no relation to current-day addresses, save the names of the streets, which have changed very little in this part of town.
Wells were also listed on the maps because their proximity to a building affected its fire rating.
The Sanborn maps also frequently mention the business operation in a building with notations of which floor whenever a building with more than one level.
Subsequently, maps were updated as Fayetteville’s population grew and new safety aids were deployed by local businesses and builders. Years that Sanborn Map Co. updated its maps of Fayetteville include: 1892, 1897, 1904, 1908, 1913, 1919, 1930 and 1948.
References
- Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Fayetteville, Washington County, Arkansas. Sanborn Map Company, May, 1886; online copies available through the Library of Congress.
- Sanborn maps. Wikipedia.
- Sanborn maps. Arkansas. University of Arkansas Libraries, Special Collections.