A Guide to Resources for the Study of New York City, NY

Digital Maps and Images

The Scholars' Lab provides access to Sanborn Fire Insurance maps for New York, provided through Proquest/UMI. These black and white maps are digitized versions of a microfilm collection of Sanborn maps collected at the Library of Congress. The Proquest/UMI collection is restricted to UVa faculty, staff and students.
New York City land use maps: These land use maps are on 36 individual sheets and were produced by the Sanborn Map Company.

Geostat has scanned selected maps for the New York city area and converted some to MrSID format and others to JPEGs. The links below will show you index maps and pages where you can view and download the images. Keep in mind that not all of the maps that we scanned will show up on these index maps.
- View Topographic Maps and Nautical Charts

Maps produced by the City of New York:
- New York: A City of Neighborhoods (PDF format)
- New York City Cycling Map (PDF format)
- New York City Transportation Maps
Miscellaneous maps:
- A Literary Map of Manhattan: A map of references to locations in Manhattan from works of fiction. Created by Randy Cohen and Nigel Holmes. First appeared in the New York Times Book Review.

More map sources can be found on the national-level resources page.

GIS data and ArcMap project (tar/zip format): This data was obtained from several different sources and processed to make it easier to use in Microstation. To use the original data in ESRI's ArcMap, you can download all the data and a corresponding ArcMap project file with the data organized into logical groups. This is a large file and may not be useful if you don't know how to use the ArcMap software. Use Winzip to decompress the file into its individual files and directories.
Digital Line Graph (DLG) data (zip format): These are digital files that were created from USGS topographic maps. They have been converted to Autocad DXF files for use in Microstation. All available data has been zipped into one file. There may be several different files for each quadrangle. The files can be identified by the last 2 characters before the .dxf extension:
- bd = boundary file
- hy = hydrology
- hp = hypsography (contours)
General GIS data (zip format): This set of data was downloaded from the NYC planning department site and contains layers such as blocks, health districts and voting districts. Data is in DXF format.
Elevation data: These data sets represent the USGS Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). To be used in Microstation they need to be converted to a terrain model using "In Roads". Here the DEMs are in both the standard DEM format and also in ascii format.

Cornell University Geospatial Information Repository (CUGIR): Provides geospatial data and metadata for New York State, with special emphasis on those natural features relevant to agriculture, ecology, natural resources, and human-environment interactions.
NYC Open Accessible Space Information System (OASIS): designed to enable city residents to find information and maps of open spaces within the city, this website is the best source for New York City aerial photographs. Also contains property ownership, park, census, and demographic data.
More GIS sources can be found on the national-level resources page.

NYC OASIS (see "Other Sources of GIS Data," above) is one of the best sources for aerial photographs of New York.
More aerial photography sources can be found on the national-level resources page.

Census factsheets from American Factfinder and other sources:
- Quick census facts for New York City
- More New York City data sets from the Census Bureau
- New York City Census Factfinder: provides access to 2000 census data for New York, searchably by neighborhood or address.
More statistical sources can be found on the national-level resources page.

A9.com maps: A9.com, a commercial site, provides "BlockView" photographic images of streets, allowing users to examine city maps and block-by-block imagery simultaneously. (Note: their New York map is limited to Manhattan.)
The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906, part of the Library of Congress's American Memory site, features forty-five films of New York dating from 1898 to 1906 from the Paper Print Collection of the Library of Congress.
More photograph sources can be found on the national-level resources page.

AIA Guide to New York City : The UVa Libraries have multiple copies of this guide to New York buildings, prepared by the American Institute of Architects. Check VIRGO for availability.
The Columbia University Libraries' Guide to New York Information Sources is aimed at Columbia students, but includes an extensive bibliography of print works on New York. See also: New York City Documents and How to Research a New York City Building, also from the Columbia Libraries.
The New York City Department of City Planning offers district profiles, information on land use and zoning, planning reports, transportation planning information, and excerpts from studies, as well as numerous maps. (Note: full versions of many of the documents in the "Publications" section are only available for a fee.)
NYC Housing Authority is the first building authority in the United States and has built and manages large number of housing.

Can't find what you're looking for at the Scholars' Lab? Try these other labs and groups around Grounds: