South Carolina FIre Insurance Maps – Index Pages

Many South Carolina towns were mapped circa 1900 by “fire insurance maps”. These very detailed street maps of cities and villages showed buildings so that insurance companies in far-off cities could assess the fire risk. A brick building would have a different color than a wooden one etc.

On the Columbia Index map / Title Page here each of the smaller colored rectangles denotes a separate detailed street map. I am not showing those here as there are almost 500 for South Carolina.
But since the Index maps are quite attractive and many of them show streets with names, we are offering them as prints on shop.old-maps.com

On this 1912 Spartanburg SC index I have labelled the major elements of a typical index map.

Map sets for eight other years exist for Spartanburg from 1884-1953. The earlier index map pages are less detailed than this one because smaller areas were mapped. See the Orangeburg examples below.

Although the subject of this blog is the Index pages of Fire Insurance maps, here are a few examples of the details shown on the actual street pages.

Cotton Mills were an important part of the local economy in South Carolina.
This one in St Matthews is pressing oil from cottonseed.

All 3 of these examples show red-colored buildings which are of brick. Yellow buildings are of wood.

Note that these mill buildings are all have easy access to railroads.

Here is a simple one-sheet map for Orangeburg which also serves as the Index Map / Title page.
1884

Six years later in 1900, a 4-sheet set of maps was issued. In this case the Index map is an inset on the first page which also has insets of a few industrial sites.

In 1922 18 sheets were needed to map Orangeburg. A striking feature of this title page is the ornate title (aka “Cartouche”) in the upper right.
Fire Insurance maps like this with their colorful indexes and decorative titles make nice wall decorations today.