Insurance maps of San Francisco, California [cartographic material] / Sanborn-Perris Map Company

A rare six volume 1905 San Francisco Sanborn Insurance Atlas, showing the city as it was just months before the great earthquake and fire of 1906, is part of the collections at the San Francisco History Center at the Main Library. The base atlas was published in 1899/1900 and was updated manually several times by the publisher, the Sanborn-Perris Map Company of New York, with the last updates done in the fall of 1905. The 6 atlas volumes show the city in great detail, with building shape, height, construction materials, and many other details typical of fire insurance atlases of the period, including firehouses, stables, elevators, chimneys, steam boilers, firewalls, doorways, etc. Although these volumes were in fact damaged by the fire they remain largely intact with minor content loss in some of the volumes. The maps are in full color with a detailed legend.