Historic Resources Committee

These maps might be found in local libraries or with state or local historic societies or preservation organizations. I've looked for online maps with no success at any localities I was interested in. They usually covered only downtown or urbanized areas in the early 1900's. Although our library and our historic preservation org has some original (in color) and electronic files (b&w) of most of the Winchester downtown historic district, there was no map for a building I was researching that lied outside the c.1900 urban area but was demolished in the 1970's. 

-------------------------------------------
Edward Acker AIA
Senior Architect
Winchester VA
-------------------------------------------

When the maps were still owned by Sanborn, they were subscribed to by libraries and then available to their cardholders. Although expensive to the libraries, it was free to the rest of us. Now a few libraries subscribe to some of them, but the maps have mostly all been acquired by Environmental Data Resources, Inc. in Milford, CT,  800.352.0050 and can be purchased though them. I think they are about $345 for all of the historical maps of a particular site. I assume environmental engineers are their best customers when preparing phase one reports.

The good news is that they can be obtained, but the bad news is that this is prohibitive pricing if you are merely fishing around exploring various sites for historical development information, which I used to do frequently. This is hugely valuable information about the development of our cities (including many, many small towns) and unfortunately seems to be a lost resource for us.

-------------------------------------------
Allen Casey AIA
Casey Architecture
Springfield MO
-------------------------------------------