{"product_id":"1896-san-antonio-texas-sanborn-fire-insurance-maps-and-atlas","title":"1896 San Antonio, Texas Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps and Atlas","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis is a complete color facsimile of Insurance Maps of San Antonio, Texas, published by the Sanborn-Perris Map Co., Limited, of 115 Broadway, New York, in 1896. All seventy-nine sheets are reproduced in full color from the original survey, together with the engraved title plate, the index, and the key map.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe key map divides the city into seventy-nine blocks along the loops of the San Antonio River and San Pedro Creek, from Crockett Square and the northern additions down past Alamo Plaza, Main and Military plazas, Milam Square, Travis Park and Paschal Square to the U.S. Arsenal and the southern additions. It also carries something no other volume in this series does: a printed endorsement, signed by the city's insurance agents, asking that only the new street and block numbers of the new Sanborn map be used.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA full street index and a separate \"Specials\" index of named firms and institutions make it possible to find any address or business by sheet number. What they record is a city of two commercial worlds. On one side stand San Fernando Cathedral and its school, the Ursuline Convent, St. Mary's and St. Joseph's, the Incarnate Word church, St. Michael's Polish church, the Santa Rosa Hospital and St. John's Orphan Asylum. On the other, the German houses that ran the trade: the Menger, Maverick and Mahncke hotels, Joske Bros. and Hugo \u0026amp; Schmeltzer, Wolf \u0026amp; Marx and Halff \u0026amp; Bro., the Beethoven Maennerchor Hall, the German English School, the Turn Halle and Scholz' Beer Garden and Natatorium, Guenther's upper and lower flour mills, and the Lone Star, San Antonio, Degen and Ochs \u0026amp; Aschbacher breweries.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAround them the working city: the Alamo Cement Works, the San Antonio Foundry, Gas Co. and Electric Light plant, the street railway plant, the Planters and San Antonio Milling cotton gins, the compress and oil works, lumber and wood yards, the Union Stock Yards, the International \u0026amp; Great Northern and Southern Pacific depots, yards and round house, the Grand Opera House and Washington Theatre, the new and old county court houses, City Hall, the Market House, and the U.S. Post Office and Custom House.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe index sheet also carries the underwriters' report for 1896: a population of 60,000; three pumping stations totalling eighteen million gallons a day, drawn from artesian wells that flowed thirty-five feet above the level of the suction pipe; a seven-million-gallon reservoir at 175 feet elevation; 100 miles of main and 700 hydrants; and a paid fire department of a chief, an assistant chief, fifty-five men and twenty-two horses, with four Ahrens steam engines and seventy-four alarm boxes. The report ends with a frank admission — the water works company had no record of the sizes of the mains in the different streets.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawn at fifty feet to an inch, Sanborn fire insurance maps are the most detailed record that survives of an American city's built fabric. Each sheet shows individual buildings block by block, color-coded by construction — fireproof, iron, brick with metal, frame or stone fronts, brick specials, frame, and the \"specials\" that carried extra hazard — with story heights, roof materials, fire walls, division-wall iron doors, iron shutters, window openings by story, skylights, stables, chimneys, steam boilers and hydrants, and D and S marking dwellings and stores.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eReproduced from the copy in the Library of Congress. An essential reference for genealogists, house historians, and collectors of San Antonio and South Texas history.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e84 pages. 8.5\" x 11.25\". Full color. Hardcover.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSatisfaction guaranteed or you can send it back!\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ExileBooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49872474865819,"sku":"Publishing 2026 \/ 820108481902","price":49.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0663\/7705\/6411\/files\/s-l1600_967f866c-c960-450d-acd7-073967929658.jpg?v=1792532526","url":"https:\/\/tangletownpress.com\/products\/1896-san-antonio-texas-sanborn-fire-insurance-maps-and-atlas","provider":"Tangletown Press","version":"1.0","type":"link"}