#oldinsurancemaps.net

[petezivkov]

Mapping 1885 New Orleans with OHM

During 2024 and 2025, I spent many of my mornings sipping coffee and building out the 1885 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map in OpenHistoricalMap.org. I created and tagged thousands of buildings across New Orleans. I also added as much information into OHM as I could, given the high level of detail available. Each building typically contains the following info:

Levels (number of floors)

Material (wood/brick/hard)

Street address (which were obsoleted in the 1890s)

Generic function (store/dwelling/stable/shed/lodging/etc)

Specific name or operator of a building or business

Start Date and End Date (I typically used /1885 and 1885/)

I spent more than a year working on this project, creating a digital version of this highly detailed 1885 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map (above) using OHM (OpenHistoricalMap.org). The digital OHM map, pictured below, has many ordinary buildings, is searchable and animated. You can see streets and buildings appear or disappear over time as you move the time slider.

[pzmaps]

Starting 1885 New Orleans with OHM

During 2024 and 2025, I spent many of my mornings sipping coffee and building out the 1885 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map in OHM. I created and tagged thousands of buildings across New Orleans. I also added as much information into OHM as I could, given the high level of detail available. Each building typically contains the following info:

Levels (number of floors)

Material (wood/brick/hard)

Street address (which were obsoleted in the 1890s)

Generic function (store/dwelling/stable/shed/lodging/etc)

Specific name or operator of a building or business

Start Date and End Date (I typically used /1885 and 1885/)

I spent about a year working on this project to create a digital version of this highly detailed 1885 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map (above) using OHM (OpenHistoricalMap.org). The digital OHM map, pictured below, has many ordinary buildings, is searchable and animated. You can see streets and buildings appear or disappear over time as you move the time slider.