1885 Fire Insurance Maps and Atlas of Boston, Massachusetts, Volume 1

In 1885 the Sanborn Map & Publishing Company of New York surveyed Boston for the fire-insurance trade, drawing the city at fifty feet to the inch across large double-page sheets. Every building is shown to scale and colour-coded for construction, with its height, use and street number recorded, and hydrants, water mains, alarm boxes and steam boilers noted. Volume One opens with a street index and a key map of the peninsula, then works sheet by sheet through the old city: the wharves and warehouses of Atlantic Avenue and the harbor front from Long Wharf to the Charlestown bridges, the crowded streets of the North End around Hanover and Salem Streets, Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, the stores, banks and offices along Washington, State, Tremont and Court Streets, the hotels around the Common, and the railroad freight houses and yards of the South Cove along Albany and Kneeland Streets.

This edition is an unabridged facsimile republication of the 1885 volume, reproduced complete and in full colour from the copy held by the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress: the street index, the key map and all twenty-eight numbered double-page sheets (1 to 25 and 25A to 25C), each laid out as a two-page spread. It is a primary source for the building stock, street pattern and businesses of downtown Boston in the 1880s, and an essential reference for local historians, genealogists, architectural historians and anyone tracing the history of a Boston property.

60 pages. 8.5" x 11". Full color. Paperback.

Printed to order and shipped directly to you — please allow up to 7 business days before shipment.

Satisfaction guaranteed or you can send it back!