Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps

Detailed urban fire-insurance maps published by the Sanborn Map Company from 1866 through the mid-20th century. For the H and H Coffee Factory project, Sanborn maps are the primary research tool for building-footprint, occupancy, and adjacent-use research across SA city blocks. Cited as the resolution path for 4+ of the places/ stubs that explicitly wait on this research (per the TODO-27 stub triage).

What Sanborn maps document

For each surveyed city block, in a given survey year:

• Building footprints (outlines, often with internal partitions and stair locations)
• Construction materials (color-coded: brick, frame, stone, etc.)
• Building heights (stories indicated)
• Occupant / business use (industrial, retail, residential, vacant, etc.)
• Specific industrial features (water tanks, boiler rooms, chemical storage, sprinkler systems, fire-rated walls)
• Street widths, lot lines, rail sidings
• Adjacent structures and party walls

Coverage was driven by fire-insurance underwriting needs, so industrial properties and downtown commercial blocks are typically more detailed than residential neighborhoods.

Coverage cadence

San Antonio Sanborn maps were re-surveyed roughly every decade through the 1880s–1950s. Each survey produced a multi-volume atlas; later years often issued paste-on update slips that corrected the base map between full re-surveys. For H&H research, the key survey years are:

• Late 1880s / 1890s — Pre-Hoffmann (William R. Hoffmann starts 1899; firm not yet established).
• 1900s / 1910s — Pre-charter Hoffmann; charter year 1912; period of 208 East Commerce / 1223 West Commerce / 307 N. Medina addresses.
• 1920s — 331 Burnett Street era (1923–1932).
• 1930s — 601 Delaware Street plant construction and early occupancy.
• 1940s / 1950s — Mature H&H operation at 601 Delaware.

The exact published survey years for SA need to be verified against the Library of Congress catalog or UTSA Special Collections holdings before research planning.

Where to access

H&H places/ stubs explicitly citing Sanborn as the research path

The TODO-27 stub triage flagged 4 places/ stubs as bucket-C (leave-as-stub-pending-external-research), with Sanborn maps named as part of the required resolution:

• places/1008-hoefgen.md — “Sanborn fire insurance maps for this grid square would show the building footprint and use” (the unidentified concrete-company predecessor to Alamo Pavers)
• places/1223-west-commerce.md — “Add when city directory or Sanborn map evidence is in hand”
• places/208-east-commerce.md — 1908 directory + Sanborn cross-check
• places/533-delaware-street.md — parcel-line and use research; Sanborn for the rail-tracks geometry

Additional Sanborn-research citations:

• places/601-delaware-street.md — multiple research-angles bullets cite Sanborn maps for second-floor machinery layout (vacuum-packing compressor placement, bulk green-coffee storage bins, rooftop water-tank location) — relevant to the 45° shear-crack / I-beam-retrofit investigation.

Research workflow

For a typical Sanborn-map lookup for an H&H address:

1. Identify the relevant survey year(s). Cross-check the LoC catalog for SA. Pick the survey year(s) closest to the period of interest.
2. Locate the grid square or block. Sanborn atlases have a key map; navigate to the index page for the target address.
3. Trace the address through multiple survey years to document occupancy/use changes over time. The decadal cadence often reveals exactly when a building was built, demolished, or repurposed.
4. Cross-reference with city directories (Morrison & Fourmy) for occupant names; the Sanborn map gives the structure, the directory gives the tenant.
5. Document findings on the relevant places/ page; promote from stub to concept once the Sanborn + directory data is in hand.

LOC San Antonio holdings — verified 2026-06-13

The freely digitized Library of Congress San Antonio set (collection filter) is the 1911 / 1912 / 1924 surveys “republished 1952”, in seven volumes: Vol 1 (sanborn08740_018), 1A (_019), 2 (_020), 3 (_021), 4 (_022), 5W (_023), 6 (_024). LOC’s free SA coverage otherwise jumps to standalone 1950–1952 items; there is no free 1930s edition. Per-volume street-index sheet numbers are continuous across the atlas and map directly to the sheet-image filenames (08740_0N_1952-0NNN). Direct IIIF image pattern: https://tile.loc.gov/image-services/iiif/service:gmd:gmd403m:g4034m:g4034sm:g4034sm_g0874019520N:08740_0N_1952-0NNN/full/pct:50/0/default.jpg.

601 Delaware (Denver Heights) is in Vol 3, sheet 269 — and the plate DOES depict the plant. Sheet 269 labels the footprint “HOFFMAN & HAYMAN COFFEE CO. — COFFEE ROASTERS, Fireproof Constn., BUILT 1932” with 1944 warehouse additions (note the cartographer’s single-n “Hoffman” spelling). It sits at the Ohio→Delaware block corner on the rail line (601 Delaware / 100 Ohio). Across Delaware (sheet 271) is the masonry industrial row that faces it — Chemical Warehouse, Wine Warehouse, Stove & Refrigerator Repair (604/606), Electric-Motor Repair, Venetian Blind Factory, then Talley Transfer Co. No bottle-washing works is labeled. Sheet index: Delaware odd 601–633 + Ohio 100–138 + Indiana 300–332 → 269; Delaware even 500–618 → 271; Delaware 300–535 (incl. 533, a 1947 appliance/tire store opposite McKesson & Robbins drugs) → 255; Cherry S. → 261; Federal Envelope Co. (Iowa/Hoefgen) → 254. See 601 Delaware § Sanborn fire-insurance coverage.

Bottle-washing works — oral corroboration. The Peché family (13 June 2026) independently place a bottle-washing works across Delaware where Manuel Peché worked c. 1940 before joining H&H — i.e. on this even/south block, in a use that predates the warehouses/repair shops the republished-1952 plate shows. That is exactly why the LOC plate doesn’t label it; an earlier survey or a late-1930s/40s city directory for the even-600 Delaware addresses should name the firm.

The LOC raster (base 1911/1912/1924 “republished 1952”) shows the plant’s late-1940s state. For higher-resolution detail (e.g. second-floor machinery layout) or other survey years, the SAPL Texana/Genealogy “1932–1971” hardcopy SA Sanborn series and ProQuest “Texas Digital Sanborn Maps” (SAPL card) remain the fuller options — but the free LOC set is sufficient to confirm the plant, its 1932/1944 build dates, and its immediate neighbors.

See also

Places

• places/1008-hoefgen.md — Sanborn research target
• places/1223-west-commerce.md — Sanborn research target
• places/208-east-commerce.md — Sanborn research target
• places/533-delaware-street.md — Sanborn research target
• places/601-delaware-street.md — Sanborn research target for machinery layout
• UTSA — SA Sanborn holdings + city-directory series

Companies

• Sanborn Map Company — the publisher

External

• Library of Congress Sanborn Maps online — public-domain digital access