1898 Fire Insurance Maps and Atlas of Savannah, Georgia

In 1898 the Sanborn-Perris Map Company of New York resurveyed Savannah for the fire-insurance underwriters, who needed to know exactly what they were being asked to insure. The result is the most detailed portrait of the city made to that date: every building drawn to scale at fifty feet to the inch and color-coded for construction - pink for brick, yellow for frame - then annotated with height in storeys, roof type, occupancy, window and door openings, party and fire walls, hydrants, cisterns and steam boilers.

The volume opens on a general plan of the city keyed to the numbered sheets that follow, and a second general plan of the cotton warehouses and naval stores yards along the river. From there it works outward: the Savannah River wharves and the Ocean Steamship Company's terminals, cotton presses and guano works; the shops of Broughton and Congress streets; the City Market and the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences; Franklin and St. James squares and the residential blocks around them; Forsyth Place and the Military Parade Grounds; the City Hospital; and Laurel Grove Cemetery at the western edge.

Sanborn atlases are among the most heavily used primary sources in American urban history, architectural preservation, genealogy and environmental site assessment, because nothing else records the ordinary built fabric of a city building by building. Complete volumes are scarce - most surviving copies have been broken up and sold off as single sheets.

This edition reproduces the 1898 volume complete and in full color from the copy in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress: the title page, the index of streets and specials, both general plans, and all 106 numbered sheets.

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

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