Seeking Free Digital Sanborns of Long Island City Pennsylvania Railroad Power House and Glenwood Power Plant

January 27, 2005 1:58 PM

DigitalSanbornFilter - I need to get my hands on some NYC digital sanborn maps [m to the i]

OK, so I am doing some personal research on two old powerplants in the NYC area: Long Island City Pennsylvania Railroad Power House and Glenwood Power Plant (self links). I want a series of Sanborn images for the two sites throughout the 19th century and up to the present day. As you can see from the links, the project is non-commercial in nature (and is basically for knowledge sakes) and not something I really want to spend money on Sanborns. The NYPL doesn't seem to allow acces to the digital sanborns - only print. Does anyone know where you can get free digital sanborns? Or if anyone has an account and can help out an ameteur historian? Also, if anyone has any information about those sites, email me (in profile). Thanks.

posted by plemeljr to grab bag (4 answers total)

NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) has the licensing agreement for the digital Sanborns. They are currently revising the policy on sharing those digitized files, and afaik they are not readily available to those outside NYC government.

I'd recommend that you inquire with NYC GISMO (Geographic Information Systems and Mapping Operations) user group or CUNY Hunter GIS Department, as they may be more willing to give them to you for research purposes.

[Full disclosure: McGuillicuddy's brother]

Some online leads:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/bytes/applbyte.html
http://www.geography.hunter.cuny.edu/gismo/
http://www.nysgis.state.ny.us/index.html
http://www.vterrain.org/Locations/us/ny/
posted by McGuillicuddy at 2:14 PM on January 27, 2005

Does NYPL not subscribe to them? We have them only for Vermont at my library. Cornell has the ones you are looking for, as does SUNY Buffalo and Columbia. All of these are students/faculty only, but my pal the Barnard librarian says that use of the Digital Sanborn Maps collection doesn't require a login if you're at the library. That shouldn't be too far from you. However, I don't know about Columbia, but Barnard's library requires someone to buzz you in if you're not a student. Email my profile and I can send you her details, she said she'd be happy to help.
posted by jessamyn at 2:31 PM on January 27, 2005

NYPL has them, but it is a city agency and will be constrained by the DoITT licensing agreement. Same for CUNY.

DoITT is just starting to revise its policy on non-government uses of the digital Sanborns. The danger of freely available information...in this day and age...imagine if detailed historical maps got into the wrong hands. For good reasons, DoITT is known as "Don't-ITT".

Academic license-holders or people who have copies for personal use will be your best bet if you need these sooner than later.

Columbia appears to have their own license. You'll need a Columbia ID to get into the library and use the computers at Columbia.
posted by McGuillicuddy at 4:35 PM on January 27, 2005

I'm a Cornell student (and, as a preservationist, quite familiar with Sanborn maps). Which ones do you need?
posted by stefnet at 6:51 PM on January 27, 2005