Fire Insurance Maps of Burlington, Vermont (2024)

This collection contains large-scale maps of Burlington, Vermont produced to give fire insurance companies and underwriters accurate information about insured properties. The fire insurance maps provide a remarkably detailed record of the city’s development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The maps dating from 1885, 1894, 1900, 1906, 1912 and 1919 were produced by the Sanborn Company. The earliest set, from 1869, does not indicate a publisher, but it is very similar to other early Sanborn maps.

The 1869 maps show the commercial, industrial, and residential area from the Lake Champlain waterfront east to Church and Shelburne Streets and from Pearl Street on the north to Howard Street on the south. Coverage gradually expands to include the growing downtown, the University of Vermont and the manufacturing area at Winooski Falls to the east, and new residential and commercial areas to the north and south.

The colored 21 x 25 inch sheets show building footprints, construction methods and materials, size and number of floors, and uses. They also show streets, railroads, wharves and slips, property boundaries, street numbers, water systems and fire hydrants. Except for 1869, each map set includes an index sheet showing the mapped area and sheet numbers, a list of streets and addresses, a “specials index” of businesses and organizations, and a detailed key that lists the symbols used to indicate building features.

Later Burlington insurance maps (1926 to 1978) are available in UVM Special Collections - http://specialcollections.uvm.edu/.

More information about Sanborn fire insurance maps is available here - http://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/sanborn/.