Architecture and Planning Resources in Archives and Special Collections

The following digital collections of atlases and maps are available online in the Ball State University Libraries Digital Media Repository.

• Original Muncie Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps (1883-1911, 1954-1955, 1965) are available for use in the Archives and Special Collections research room

Related Sanborn Map Resources: 

“Guide to Using Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps” (GIS Research & Map Collection, 2009)

• This tutorial describes the numerous features of the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps and details their use in current research. The guide includes a lesson for teachers to use the maps to study history.

Digital Sanborn Maps--Indiana (circa 1883-1965) [via Indiana University-Bloomington Libraries]

• Includes color digital images for most of the fire insurance maps of Indiana cities produced by the Sanborn Map Company from circa 1883-1965. Browsable by city or county.

Plat maps are an excellent resource for researching the history of a specific property, including the names of previous landowners. The following Delaware County plat books (circa 1920-1984) contain information such as township-and-range maps with landowner names, indexes of landowners and farmers, county highway and city street maps, classified business directories, and advertisements.

The plat books are listed in reverse chronological order. More recently published Delaware County plat books are available in the GIS Research and Map Collection (Bracken Library, 2nd Floor East).