Sanborn to Run: Overcoming Workplace Obstacles for Fire Insurance Surveyors

Have you ever wondered how Sanborn Map Company surveyors got access and permission to survey the many buildings across thousands of North American towns that are preserved in our collection of Sanborn fire insurance maps? Well, as it turns out, sometimes they didn’t.

I started to understand this recently while I was perusing the plate below, from a 1950 Cambridge, Massachusetts Sanborn map volume. As the map shows, one city block adjacent to MIT held the National Biscuit Company (which later shortened its name to Nabisco), Ward Baking Company (the original part of the company that brought us Twinkies and Wonder Bread), and Kraft factories, all in a row. As mind-boggling as I found that confluence, my attention soon turned to a note I hadn’t seen before along Albany Street: “Mutual Risk. Admittance Refused, Data From Plans.”

I asked my fellow reference librarians about it, and several of them had also seen this note, which evidently means what it sounds like – the employee was not given access to the grounds, and therefore could not make a survey of that particular building for the Sanborn Map Company or their customers. Below is another example of a place where the “Admittance Refused” note appears, at the site of the Universal Steel Company factory in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania in 1924. In this case, the note goes on to say “NO INSURANCE” and “(Plans from Previous Survey).”

While it had never occurred to me, it seems unsurprising in hindsight that Sanborn surveyors did not exactly get the red carpet rolled out for them. After all, their work involved pacing up and down commercial and residential streets and making extremely detailed observations of private homes, government buildings, and corporations alike. Being turned away by secretive business owners was the least of their worries, within the spectrum of public paranoia. According to a 1951 article from D.C’s Evening Star newspaper, sometimes they were locked out on high-rise roofs, attacked by dogs, shot at by smugglers, and even seized by military police on suspicion of espionage.

The Sanborn Map Company had strategies to mitigate the routine inconvenience of being viewed with suspicion when and where their employees did their surveying. In the Geography and Map Division’s reference collection, we have copies of early 20th century Surveyors’ Manuals published by the Company, and they give clear directions to surveyors about how to make themselves known when arriving in a new place, and what to do in the case of admittance being refused. The manual begins with Chapter 1, “General Instructions,” in which the very first page admonishes surveyors always to carry a letter of identification with them, and always to visit the police headquarters in a newly assigned location to explain who they were and what they were doing. In the words of the manual, “a knowledge of your presence by police department may save you from much time and embarrassment.” In Chapter 3, “Field Work,” item 20 states: “If permission to survey a building is refused, show all you can from outside and note firm name, if any, and ‘Admittance Refused.’” Closer to the end of the manual, Chapter 9 (“Reports”) instructs the surveyors further, saying to add notations such as “Mutual Risk” to denote industrial buildings under mutual insurance, and then to get copies of the plans if possible and try to verify them. The next paragraph says to write “Admittance refused” if this is the case, and then to add “Data from plans in office” if access was obtained to plans. Thus, the surveyor manual clarifies the meaning of the label of “Mutual Risk. Admittance Refused, Data From Plans” on the Cambridge, Massachusetts factory row that first caught my notice, and why the surveyor wrote it!

However, the highly professional, prim and proper Surveyors’ Manual is only half the story. Sanborn Map Company surveyors were not simply mathematically minded automatons. That point was really drive home by the next set of materials we have on the reference shelves, bound copies of The Sanborn Survey, which ran during the 1920s as a company newsletter complete with jokes, cartoons, personal narratives and even recipes submitted by employees. The image at the start of this post and below is a staff-submitted cartoon from a 1923 issue of the Survey, showing a surveyor holding measuring tools and counting his paces as he walks along a building corridor. His wet shoes and the enormous spider lurking overhead make it look rather uninviting, but he plods along resolutely and ignores an employee opening a 500-pound door to yell “HEY!” at him from next to a “KEEP OUT” sign. The cartoon is titled “A Letter from A. Cubb,” which is a play on words – throughout many Survey entries, novice surveyors are referred to as “cub surveyors.” I presume this is merely a reference to bear cubs as being young animals just as the cub surveyors are young men, but if anyone has further information about this terminology, please let me know in the comments! Whatever the intentions of the cartoonist were, it seems safe to assume that the image refers to a young and eager surveyor, highly aware of the dimensions of his surroundings, but perhaps not reading the room, so to speak.

On the other hand, more seasoned surveyors seemed to have all kinds of tips and tricks they imparted through Survey submissions for avoiding heat. Some were merely humorous, as in a submission shown below entitled “Don’ts for Cubs” from 1921, which included the advice “Don’t look for trespass signs until your work is done.”

Some advice was wily. In another submission from 1921 entitled “Information Refused,” an elder surveyor described encountering a locked manufacturing plant in San Francisco that was owned by a firm so secretive, he couldn’t even get the employees to divulge what they made there. This kind of information was important for helping clients determine the level of fire risk, so the surveyor’s colleague called the company a short while later asking them for their price on laundry soap. According to the story, the person who picked up the phone responded indignantly, saying they didn’t make laundry soap, but rather they made “teredo proof ship paint.” Mystery solved!

(If you’re wondering, “teredo” refers to a type of worm-like clam known to boat owners as the termite of the sea, and I don’t recommend an image search.)

The need to sway people using the power of suggestion was a repeated theme for elder surveyors. In an entry from 1922 entitled “Loyalty, Tact and Courtesy,” the author recounted a story of a surveyor who was refused entrance by a business proprietor. The surveyor apparently stated: “… I do not presume to tell you your own business. You will recall, however, the very defective building down the street in this same block. The insurance companies may feel that as you refused permission that there may be some similar defect in your building.” Evidently, this technique worked and the surveyor was granted entry.

Some entry writers waxed philosophically about their methods. A 1923 entry called “The Technique of Psychology in Insurance Surveying” gives the following summary:

“Few of our esteemed, but often patience-shattering, fellow citizens outside of the insurance business know anything about insurance maps. Therefore, when you, psychological technician that you are, go into a store or factory, and it becomes necessary to explain your business, you do so intelligently and patiently. Kindliness can be shown, too, by sympathetic attention to the owner’s denunciation of the insurance trust, but do not carry this too far; if possible, say a few good words for the source of all your income.”

Have you ever seen the “Admittance Refused” note on a Sanborn map? Feel free to tell us about it in the comments!

Learn more

• If you want to learn more about fire insurance maps, including those made by the Sanborn Map Company, start with our research guide, Fire Insurance Maps at the Library of Congress: A Resource Guide
• For more tips on how to use Sanborn fire insurance maps and what they mean, check out my colleague’s previous blog post, Searching for Sanborn Maps
• To peruse the maps themselves, head to our digital collection of Sanborn fire insurance maps
• If you would like to read through a Surveyors’ Manual for these and other insights into how surveyors conducted their work day to day, there is a digitized copy available on the Resources page of the California State University Northridge’s Sanborn Fire Insurance Atlas Collection guide.