
Newark Changing in Three Maps
Created for the Newark Public Library
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1916 lithograph of Newark with Manhattan skyline in distance
This project overlays historical maps above the contemporary geography to reveal changes to the urban form over time. Search for any address. Drag the time slider left and right. Fly around the historical city and your own neighborhood.
Compare past and present for three moments in time: 1850, 1890, and 1930
Referenced against other sources like city directories, census records, and old photos , these maps allow us to reconstruct and imagine Newark as it once was. This project gives us an accurate picture of Newark past vs. present for thousands of individual buildings.
1. A Snapshot of Newark in 1850
This map captures Newark just before the U.S. Civil War: population 39,000. Within a short walk of the city center at Broad and Market, there were still farmlands and country mills. More than a country town but less than a metropolis, this map shows Newark moments before the Industrial Revolution brought factories, smoke, and thousands of immigrants. It is a city largely unrecognizable and radically different from the Newark we know today.
Zoom in on the map. Can you find your address and your home on this map? What was your neighborhood like in 1850?
1850 Map by the M. Dripps Survey Company
Map key for the 1889 map shown below
2. A Snapshot of Newark in 1889
In the 19th through mid-20th century, the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company created detailed maps of some 12,000 U.S. cities and towns. The maps documented the building footprint, dimensions, height, material, owner, and land use for millions of buildings, as well as the locations of fire hydrants, water mains, trolleys, railroads, and natural features.
Fire insurance companies used these maps to assess the risk of fire for each building in the city, and therefore the amount the building's owner needed to pay them in fire insurance. These maps are the most detailed historical record available for America's historical built environment. The Newark Public Library has complete sets of city atlases for the years 1868, 1873, 1889, 1901, 1911-12, and 1926-27. Maps are printed and stored in volumes weighing some 20 pounds each on pages some 21 by 25 inches square, drawn at a scale of 50 feet to one inch. Fire insurance maps for Newark and the nation were discontinued by the 1960s due to changes in technology and decreased risk of fire.
This 1889 map captures Newark at the height of the Industrial Revolution: population 182,000. Hundreds of factories bordered the freight railroad lines and waterways. Thousands of business names and business owners are labeled for every building and city lot in the entire city. Dozens of trolley lines reached into every corner of the American city.
What kinds of businesses and factories were found in your neighborhood in 1889? How is the historic city you see here different from the same city and streets today? Drag the time slider to find out.
______ Trolley Lines in 1889
______ Railroad Lines in 1889
______ Morris Canal Path
1889 City Atlas for the Sanborn Map Company
Index page from the 1889 Sanborn
Each of the library's approximately two dozen volumes contains: a decorative title page; an index of streets and addresses; a master index showing the entire mapped area for Newark, and sheet numbers for each neighborhood in the city (usually depicting some 20 to 30 city blocks on each page).
Placed end to end in an unbound volume, the printed fire insurance maps for Newark would create a map measuring some 20 by 30 feet. Too large and impossible for the public to navigate. For the first time, this digital project shows the entire map of Newark in 1889 on one page.
3. A Snapshot of Newark in 1930
By the 1920s, the new invention of the airplane made aerial photography possible. Instead of walking street to street and imagining the city from the air, people could now actually see the city from above through photos and transform these into maps.
This map shows Newark at its economic height: before the Great Depression, World War II, population loss, factory closings, and urban decline. Newark had reached the maximum extent of its population size and urban growth by 1930, population 442,000.
What patterns of urban growth do you notice on this map? How is the city that you see in this map different from the city you know today?
1930 Aerial Photography for the United States Geological Survey