TOURS      GIVE   

 CONTACT      ACCESSIBILITY    


MAPS

Our Archives have over 1,200 maps in its collection. These can be viewed or used by researchers during Research Library open hours. Any unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Please contact the History Center for authorization to print the maps (please note there is a reproduction fee).

Thanks to multiple digitization projects with community partners over the years, you can access some of The History Center map collection through the links below: 

History Center Historic Maps

Tompkins County Public Library Local Maps & Atlases

HistoryForge Database

Bell Hecht's Scanned Images for Tompkins County

DIGITAL MAPPING PROJECTS

HISTORY CENTER MAP COLLECTIONS

  • City of Ithaca Maps - 1836, 1851, 1872, and more...
  • Maps of Tompkins County - 1853, 1935, and more...
  • 1866 Atlas of Tompkins County
  • Birds' Eye Views of Ithaca - 1873 and 1882
  • Military Tract Map and Balloting Book - 1825
  • Sanborn Insurance Maps of Ithaca - 1893, 1904, 1910, 1919, 1961, and 1965
     and over 1,200 more...

MODERN MAPS OF TOMPKINS COUNTY

For modern maps of Tompkins County, we encourage you to explore the resources on the Tompkins

County Mapping Portal, maintained by the Tompkins County IT Department.



SANBORN MAPS AND HISTORYFORGE

The Tompkins County HistoryForge project uses maps from the Sanborn Fire Insurance Atlas of Ithaca for 1910. The Sanborn maps were done for every village, town and city in the United States about every seven to eight years from roughly 1880 to 1930. The Library of Congress  has a very complete collection. The collection has been only very partly digitized but the Library’s site features a complete list of all the maps. Read an excellent article titled "Introduction to the Sanborn Map Collection" featured on the Library of Congress webpage.

The Sanborn maps are very large scale maps and show every building in considerable detail.  The maps are color-coded for construction materials and other features are displayed using a set of symbols that remained in use throughout the publication history. Commercial properties are heavily annotated so that the insurance underwriter could estimate risk.

Locally there is a very complete set for the City of Ithaca although this is scattered over four different collections. The Tompkins County Public Library has digitized The History Center’s collection and made them available online. These are being rescanned at a higher resolution and uploaded to the HistoryForge site, where they will be geo-rectified. There is a fairly complete set for Trumansburg at the Ulysses Historical Society. Dryden has a full set of black and white three-quarter-sized reprints. 

Explore the HistoryForge Database

Physical Address

Located inside the Tompkins Center for History & Culture

110 North Tioga Street

(On the Ithaca Commons) 

Ithaca NY, 14850 USA

Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫˀ Territory

Hours

Exhibit Hall Wednesday-Saturday 10am-6pm - CLOSED Sun-Tues

Cornell Local History Research Library & Archives - By appointment only. Please contact archives@thehistorycenter.net

Contact                                                     

Email: Refer to Contact page for individual emails, General inquiries to community@thehistorycenter.net

Phone: 607-273-8284

Web: thehistorycenter.net

Find us on social media @tompkinshistory

GIVE       ACCESSIBILITY



© Copyright 2020-2024 The History Center in Tompkins County

Web Design by Zoë Van Nostrand

Powered by Wild Apricot Membership Software
Visit Us