Sanborn Maps

Originally published by the Sanborn Map Company in the mid-1800s, Sanborn Maps were used by fire insurance companies to understand the location, structure, and purpose of properties and buildings in over 12,000 United States cities.

The Library of Congress offers Many Sanborn Maps and extensive explanations about understanding and reading them. The Sanborn Library, LLC, a LightBox company, keeps others.

Transylvania County was one of the rural counties in America for which Sanborn created these insurance maps. Full-color Sanborn Maps for 1911, 1916, and 1925 are available at the Library of Congress. A fourth set of maps for 1931, black-and-white line drawings, is available through the website of the Transylvania County Library.

The maps that show the Main Street Historic District in Brevard accurately show early construction and businesses from more than 100 years ago. Comparing them to each other and present-day satellite photos provides valuable data for the study of local history.

The overlay above clearly shows several building changes over the past 100 years. For example, two of the three buildings on Jordan Street to the right (east) of the Times Arcade Alley (WJN10 and WJN12) didn't exist in 1931. Instead, only one of the buildings (WJN11), housing a store (the "S" in the Sanborn drawing), was in the same area. The store was the Phillips Bakery. There is also a building in the center of the image labeled "Printing". This space is a parking lot today, but the building in 1931 (STE12) was the home of the Brevard News – the predecessor to the Transylvania Times.

The Sanborn Maps are a valuable resource when building historical timelines. Throughout this book, many sections of the maps will illustrate the history of a property. The Library of Congress provides the 1911, 1916, and 1924 maps without copyright restrictions. The 1931 maps and sections appearing here are used with permission from the Sanborn Library, LLC, a LightBox company.

If you'd like to know more about the Sanborn Maps, review the legends and keys used to make them, or learn how to interpret them, visit the Library of Congress page titled "About the Sanborn Map Collection" at https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps/about-this-collection/.