My name is Brandon Silverman. I’m a dad, former start-up founder and these days, a transparency activist (you can read more about some of my story here). But I’m also a designer. And like most designers, I’ve spent a lot of time over the last 15 years reading kottke.org. This project is the culmination of several years work that all started when I read a post on kottke over 10 years ago.

It was September of 2011 and I saw a link on kottke.org to a small collection of incredible typography from something called the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. I had never seen them before and they blew my mind. I immediately became a massive fan and in fact, when I got married, my wife and I designed our wedding invitation based off of them.

However, there has never been a place to see all of the art from the maps in one place. Until now.

This website is a free archive dedicated exclusively to creating a one-stop shop for all the incredible typography and art of the Sanborn maps. It includes almost 3,500 unique decorative titles, all drawn before 1923. While large portions of the original maps have been digitized and archived in various places both online and offline, there has never been a comprehensive collection of all of the decorative titles from the Sanborn maps. I hope you enjoy!