MAPS OF CORVALLIS

A series of maps of Corvallis are mentioned in the literature, but the oldest authoritative maps remain those of fire insurance firms, and of all the fire insurance firms, Sanborn was the most widely used.

D. A. Sanborn, a young surveyor from Somerville, Massachusetts, was engaged in 66 by the Aetna Insurance Company to prepare insurance maps for several cities in Tennessee. Probably the maps he made were retained in manuscript copies in the Aetna files and were not published. No copies were registered or deposited for copyright and none are preserved in the Library of Congress. Before working for Aetna, Sanborn conducted surveys and compiled an atlas of the city of Boston titled Insurance Map of Boston, Volume 1, 67. The title page reads "By D. A. Sanborn, C.E. 7 Broadway, New York." Also on the title page are symbols and an index map. The atlas includes twenty-nine large plates showing sections of Boston at the scale of 50 feet to an inch. It is believed to include the earliest insurance maps published by Sanborn. The success of the Boston atlas and the commission from Aetna must have impressed the young surveyor with the importance of detailed and specialized maps for the fire insurance industry. Following his assignment in Tennessee for Aetna, he established the D. A. Sanborn National Insurance Diagram Bureau in New York City in l867. From this modest beginning grew the specialized company that has compiled and published maps for the fire insurance industry for more than a hundred years. During the period 65 to 1900 a number of surveyors and map publishers prepared fire insurance maps and atlases, but these were principally of urban areas in their immediate locale. New Jersey cities in particular seemed to invite such cartographic activity. Arnois, Spielman and Company, which subsequently merged with Charles B. Brush, issued insurance atlases of Hoboken, Jersey City, and Hudson County. Reimer and Olcott published an atlas of Orange, New Jersey; and Scarlett and Scarlett issued pertinent volumes for Essex and Mercer Counties, the Jersey coast, and the cities of Harrison and Kearny. From 72 to 73 William A. Miller published insurance maps of the New Jersey cities of Elizabeth, Paterson, Plainsfield, Rahway, Union, and West Hoboken. Midwest publishers of insurance atlases included Alphonso Whipple, who produced volumes for Missouri cities and Granite City, Illinois, and the Rascher Map Company, which issued a series for Chicago as well as for Detroit and Muskegon, Michigan; Duluth, Minnesota; and Kansas City, Missouri. All the above named companies had only brief productive periods and then either ceased publishing or were absorbed by the Sanborn Map Company. D. A. Sanborn died in 83. The company he founded, however, continued to grow. In 99 it acquired the Perris and Browne firm and can by virtue of this expansion date its origins to 52. The firm name established by Sanborn in 67 was changed in 76 when the firm was incorporated under the name Sanborn Map and Publishing Company, which then became the Sanborn Perris Map Company, Ltd., until, in 1902, the name was shortened to the Sanborn Map Company, the form which the company uses today. The earliest Sanborn item in the Library of Congress is the Insurance Map of Boston, actually an atlas, published in 67. The collections of the Geography and Map Division also include an 68 map of Toledo, Ohio, in five sheets, with an accompanying sheet giving the population of the city, number of available fire engines, and other information of use to underwriters. There is a copyright registration notice on the descriptive form but not on the map sheets. The former carries the imprint of D. A. Sanborn National Insurance Diagram Bureau, 7 Broadway, New York City.

Also in the Library of Congress is a five-sheet map of Rutland, Vermont, published by the Sanborn Map and Publishing Company, Limited, in October 79. It carries no notice of copyright registration. The Rutland map was purchased in March 1929. All five sheets bear stamps of a previous owner, the Phoenix Assurance Company of London, the earliest company to use fire insurance maps. There is further evidence of Sanborn's publishing activity before 83 in Earl G. Swem's Maps Relating to Virginia in the Virginia State Library and Other Departments of the Commonwealth (Richmond, 19), which describes some fourteen Sanborn maps of Virginia cities, published between 72 and 82. Sanborn appears to have begun systematic registering of I maps, with deposit copies, in 83. With the exception of the Boston atlas, the 68 map of Toledo, and the map of Rutland, Vermont, noted above, the sheets carrying the 83 date are the earliest in the Library of Congress. Within the next two or three years deposit sheets were received for cities in virtually every state, suggesting that in the years immediately before and following incorporation in 76 Sanborn had expanded its insurance map coverage to all parts of the United States. Although some of the growth resulted from absorption of other map companies, most of the expansion must be attributed to good managerial procedures and practices. The Sanborn Company successfully produced detailed, comprehensive, and up-to-date maps which met the needs of the fire insurance industry. Sanborn surveyors were at work in all the states, and during the years of maximum production there were as many as three hundred employees in the field and more than four hundred in the main office and publishing plant in Pelham, New York, and in secondary production centers in Chicago and San Francisco. Sanborn mapmakers worked anonymously, and their names never appeared on the maps they produced. Occasionally, a field man achieved fame and fortune in some subsequent activity. One such mapmaker was Daniel Carter Beard, who is remembered as naturalist, illustrator, author of books for boys, and one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America. In his autobiography, published in 1939, Beard related how he joined the Sanborn Company in 72. "My opportunity to travel came at last," he recalled, "and I left my then well-paying position in the {Cincinnati} engineer's office to accept an appointment for a lesser amount as a surveyor for the Sanborn Map and Publishing Company. While working for them I not only saw all those places I had heard about but I made maps of them, made diagrams of all the homes in each town and city I visited. I took delight in putting into my records mention of real occupancy, genteel or disreputable. After four or five years of this work I knew a lot about our people, saints and sinners, rich and poor." To ensure uniform standards of accuracy and presentation on its maps, the Sanborn Company published, in 1905, a Surveyors' Manual for the Exclusive Use and Guidance of Employees. A number of subsequent editions were published of this comprehensive and detailed instruction book. The introduction to the manual emphasized that "Sanborn maps are vastly different from all other publications, and the novice must start in with the idea that it is all new, though some former occupation, such as civil engineering and architectural work, should fit a man to readily grasp the primary principles. Our maps," the introduction explained, "are made for the purpose of showing at a glance the character of the fire insurance risks of all buildings. Our customers depend on the accuracy of our publications, and rely upon the information supplied, incurring large financial risks without making personal examinations of the properties." The manual included more than a hundred pages of precise instructions and included sample maps and a comprehensive symbol key. "The information reported," the Sanborn surveyor was advised, "is technical to the fire insurance world, and you should master the technicalities and ever bear in mind the use to which the map you are producing will be applied." Maps were drawn at the scale of 50 feet to an inch, on sheets 21 by 25 inches, which were cross ruled in one-inch squares. The manual instructed surveyors to map all the built-up part of the town or city. "Information," they were told, "is generally available at the Court House, or...some real estate agent may have the necessary data. {However} if records are not easily obtainable do not waste too much time, but proceed to measure up the territory with tapeline, and plot sheets from notes so secured. In plotting put on the street names and widths and real estate description." Each year Sanborn extended its coverage to additional cities and also issued revised editions and paste-on correction slips for previously published maps and atlases. Production probably reached a peak in the early 1930s. An article about the Sanborn Company published in the February 1937 issue of Fortune Magazine stated that "Sanborn maps describe the houses on every street in more than ,000 U.S. towns and cities...{and} cost anywhere from $ to 5200 {per map} depending on the technical difficulties involved in making them up." Sanborn maps were lithographically printed in the company's Pelham, New York, plant. With the aid of waxed paper stencils, Sanborn employees colored the maps by hand, because there were usually fewer than twenty orders for a single map sheet. They were issued as unbound sheets for towns and cities with maps of under a hundred sheets. Bound volumes, each with approximately one hundred plates, were published for large cities. Thirty-nine volumes were required for New York City. Around 1920 the company introduced a loose-leaf atlas format which made it possible to replace outdated plates without reprinting an entire volume. By 1920 Sanborn virtually monopolized the insurance map industry. The company had only two or three relatively small competitors, including Walter I. Fisher who, operating in Minneapolis as the General Inspection Bureau, published insurance maps of more than 640 towns in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota between 1907 and 1930. Fisher survived as an independent mapper no doubt because of his policy "to map every town and every risk of any particular consequence unless the Sanborn people have already got a map, in that case we have to keep hands off because of the chances of treading on somebody's toes." Sanborn early learned that having a monopoly in a very restricted and homogeneous market invited critical observation and evaluation. Most of the company's customers were members of national or regional underwriting associations where they could discuss Sanborn's real or assumed deficiencies. One of the major concerns was the relatively high cost of Sanborn's products and services. The most active and persistent pressures on the Sanborn Company came from the National Board of Fire Underwriters which in 19 appointed a special map committee to consider the possibility of sponsoring its own map publishing and distributing unit. During the next forty-five years NBFU's Map Committee worked closely with Sanborn with the objective of providing the fire insurance industry with the best possible maps at reasonable cost. The Sanborn Company weathered the various attempts by the National Board of Fire Underwriters to establish a competing map company for almost half a century, although it did submit to a measure of control and supervision by the NBFU Map Committee. Among other concessions, Sanborn added to its board of directors first one, and later two, members of the Map Committee. The fortunes of the Sanborn Company did not depend, however, solely upon their relations with the NBFU and the fire insurance underwriters. Economic, political, and social conditions also influenced the sale of Sanborn maps and services. Thus, the construction boom in the middle and late twenties had an accelerating effect on fire insurance sales and upon the need for maps. During these years Sanborn prepared maps of a number of new towns and cities and resurveyed previously mapped areas. For particularly active construction areas, revisions of Sanborn maps were issued at six-month intervals. The period of economic prosperity did not last and with the financial crisis of 1929 and the depression of the thirties, construction was curtailed, fire insurance sales lagged, and companies again exerted pressure on Sanborn to reduce the cost of its maps and services. Sanborn's response was to offer cash discounts to subscribers, offer the paste-on service for sheet maps (i. e., those for smaller towns and cities), and to mount the sheet maps on cloth to ensure longer life. World War II placed mandatory restrictions on construction and on the publication of maps. Sanborn, like most other map publishers, survived during these years by producing maps on contract for the military services. The hoped-for postwar prosperity was slow in arriving, particularly for the Sanborn Company. In an attempt to bolster declining sales, maps were published for a number of cities at the reduced scales of one inch to 100 feet and one inch to 200 feet (as compared with the standard one inch to 50 feet) and issued in small-size atlas format. By 1960 it was evident that the fire insurance industry was undergoing major changes and the detailed maps and services offered by Sanborn were no longer required. In its 1961 report the National Bureau of Fire Underwriter's Map Committee noted that some companies had discontinued the use of maps and decided "to review the overall situation from the standpoint of the needs of business at the present time." 19 The following year the committee reported "there is a general (not unanimous) view that residential mapping is not considered essential by the companies or the bureaus, nor is it considered essential to have town maps for those communities which are predominantly residential, but that business and industrial areas for all other towns and cities warrant map service." 20 This was the final report of the NBFU Map Committee. The report was actually more optimistic than Sanborn's business warranted. The market for Sanborn maps never recovered after World War II, and the last catalog issued by the company was published in 1950. In 1967 Sanborn's president, C. F. Doane, stated that "since 1961 there have been no new {catalog} entries {for insurance maps} for distribution. This Company has limited itself to revision service for existing atlases and graphics prepared on a custom basis for non-insurance clientele." The publications referred to by Doane are corrected, reduced-scale, photo-revision, black and white atlases for some 0 United States cities and towns that Sanborn has issued in spiral binding format since 1962. They update previously established data. These atlases have not been deposited for copyright by the Sanborn Company. In 1977 S. Greeley Wells, president of the Sanborn Company, offered to present to the Library of Congress superceded volumes of Sanborn atlases in this series. Some forty-five volumes, covering urban areas in the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey have been received to date. The map legend, (low resolution) (high resolution) which is limited to black-and-white symbols, differs considerably from the legend for maps in the colored volumes. (legend image) The scale employed for the spirally bound series is one inch to 100 feet, the same as in the small format atlases published after 1950. In 1977 Sanborn copyrighted microfilm editions of fire insurance atlases for Chicago, Illinois, and Queens County, New York. The former includes nine reels and the latter four. The maps have been corrected to 1975. A microfilm edition of Washington, D.C. corrected to 1977, was copyrighted by Sanborn early in 1978. The reasons why Sanborn maps are no longer widely used by the fire insurance industry are varied and complex, including a number of internal and external factors. The demise of insurance cartography did not occur suddenly and dramatically but was characterized instead by a slow and persistent decline over a long period of time. Because of the homogeneous nature of the clientele, new techniques, methods, and procedures developed in or introduced into one company were soon adopted by other members of the underwriting fraternity. One such new method was the "line card" system for recording risks which was adopted by some companies as early as the mid-twenties. Some companies, too, may perhaps be using computer storage for their liability and risk records. Even if they are not already, it is inevitable that such records will eventually be computerized. Company mergers have also played a part in limiting the market for insurance maps. The resulting increased financial strength has enabled companies to maintain their own engineering departments to inspect and service questionable risks or to engage firms such as the Sanborn Map Company to make inspections and prepare maps on a custom basis. More specific reasons for the decline in use of Sanborn maps were supplied by a librarian for the Insurance Company of North America. "As the nation grew in all areas," she wrote, "keeping the maps up to date became cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive. At the same time, increased financial strength of the Company and progressive reduction in the number of instances in which we needed such detailed locality information led us to discontinue the service prior to 1950. No comparable source of data has replaced use of maps at INA. There is no need to maintain the wealth of detail about the small risk to forestall the possibility of catastrophe from fire. Inspection services maintained by fire insurance rating organizations and our own inspection services have proved adequate in the light of modern building construction, better fire codes, and improved fire protection methods."