Library Guides: Urban Studies Library Guide: Find Maps

Maps for Architecture Research

Fire insurance maps are excellent for historical research associated with preservation efforts.

Sanborn Map Company (Wikipedia)

Louisiana Fire Insurance Maps Online This link opens in a new window
Fire Insurance Maps online (FIMo), is Historical Information Gatherers' research portal to find and view high-definition, color Fire Insurance Maps, Real Estate Atlases, Plat Books, and other historical maps for Louisiana showing building structures, building construction details, property ownership, property uses, and other useful information.
Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970 This link opens in a new window
Access large-scale maps of Louisiana towns and cities. Manipulate maps, magnify and zoom in on specific sections, and layer maps from different years.

Using Sanborn Maps Quick guide to using the Sanborn Maps database, available through Tulane University Libraries.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Collection (TUSC) This collection includes fire insurance maps made by the Sanborn Map Company: 46 volumes of the maps are for New Orleans and cover 1876–1940s (updated through the 1960s). The two volumes for 1876 are the earliest Sanborns for New Orleans, and the only known copies. There are also 24 volumes for other cities in Louisiana and 14 volumes for cities in Mississippi.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps (1876 New Orleans) Volumes one and two of the 1876, New Orleans, Louisiana, Sanborn Fire Insurance Atlas represent the earliest and only known copies of forty fire insurance maps for this locality and era. Originally bound in two volumes of twenty maps each, the maps feature individual city blocks in New Orleans, Louisiana. Data depicted includes where buildings were located, how they were laid out on each property, and the materials from which they were constructed. The buildings are color coded to indicate those materials, while symbols and notes provide additional information. The maps are drawn to a scale large enough to show the layouts of the buildings in considerable detail, as each map measures 27 x 36 inches.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps (Library of Congress) Nearly 25,000 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, which depict the structure and use of buildings in U.S. cities and towns. Maps will be added monthly until 2020, for a total of approximately 500,000.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps: Orleans Parish (Library of Congress)
Sanborn Map & Publishing Co.
Sanborn Map Company

Braun New Orleans Fire Insurance Atlases Three fire insurance atlases for the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. Coverage of the Fourth District (1874 and 1877) and the Third District (1877). Collection 123 of the Southeastern Architectural Archive.
Langermann and Celles Fire Insurance Atlases This collection includes seven fire insurance atlases that cover the 1st through 6th districts of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Robinson New Orleans Fire Insurance Atlas This collection includes one fire insurance atlas for the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, which covers the entire city at the time of 1883 and illustrates blocks with buildings of individual properties. Buildings are color coded to indicate which materials were used in their construction.
Robinson’s Atlas of the City of New Orleans, Louisiana (1883) Digitized copy of the Robinson Atlas as held by the New Orleans Notarial Archive. An 1883 city map, arranged according to the city's seven municipal districts.

American Geographical Society Library Digital Map Collection
Showcases maps spanning the globe from the 15th to 21st centuries.
Digital Collections: Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center
The National Map (USGS)
A collaborative effort among the USGS and other Federal, State, and local partners to improve and deliver topographic information for the Nation. Includes orthoimagery (aerial photographs), elevation, geographic names, hydrography, boundaries, transportation, structures, and land cover.
EarthExplorer (USGS)
Provides users the ability to query, search, and order satellite images, aerial photographs, and cartographic products from several sources.
The New York Public Library Digital Collections
A living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more.

Geospatial Historian: Open HGIS Lessons and Resources
A tutorial-based open access textbook for historical scholars and digital humanists designed to teach practical digital mapping and GIS skills.
NYPL Map Warper
A tool for digitally aligning ("rectifying") historical maps from the NYPL's collections to match today's precise maps.

Digitized Louisiana Maps, 1513-1900
The Louisiana Research Collection's renowned map collection extends from 1513 to the present. With more than 400 maps from before 1799, its holdings include state and regional topographic maps, maps of vegetation zones and natural resources, parish and highway maps, and plans of New Orleans tracing the city's development since its founding in 1718.
Physical Maps in Tulane Special Collections (TUSC)
TUSC's map holdings extend from 1513 to the present, with about 400 maps dating from before 1799. Among the collection's diverse holdings are early maps of North America and the vast territory of Louisiana.
City of New Orleans GIS: Historic Zoning
Vieux Carré Virtual Library
Historical Maps of U.S. Cities: New Orleans The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection online includes 18 maps of New Orleans, from 1728 to 1920.
Historical Zoning and Land Use Maps from the City Planning Commission
Historical Topographic Maps (USGS)
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) USGS National Geospatial Program is converting historical printed topographic quadrangles to an electronic format (GeoPDF).
TopoView (USGS)
Access historical topographic maps.
Library of Congress: Maps
Largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world.

Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
Social Explorer “contains over 18,000 maps, hundreds of profile reports, 40 billion data elements, 335,000 variables and 220 years of data”. It can be used to locate census tract boundary information from 1940 to the present.
PolicyMap This link opens in a new window
A data and mapping tool that enables government, commercial, non-profit and academic institutions to access data about communities and markets across the US.

New Orleans Area - Maps (The Data Center)
DataDriven (NOLA.gov)
DataDriven outlines the City of New Orleans' approach to managing data, publishing data, and using data.
OpenStreetMap
Built by a community of mappers that contribute and maintain data about roads, trails, cafés, railway stations, and much more, all over the world.
Geographic Information Systems (Tulane Library Guide)

Maps in Books

Historical maps can be difficult to find, and may only exist in archival collections with no digital online access. In these cases, it is often helpful to search for maps that are published in secondary sources, especially books written by historians. When searching the library catalog, take note of the Format information, which will tell you if there are any maps or illustrations (abbreviated "ill.") included.