About the Project

Working in close coordination with UChicago Library’s Center for Digital Scholarship and the “Mapping Chicagoland” initiative, this project aims to digitize historic Sanborn fire insurance maps from 1920’s-era Chicago to create an historically accurate building footprints layer (with related metadata) for all 75 Chicago community areas. Led by the Center for Digital Scholarship’s post-bacc fellow Parker Otto, this cohort’s work will empower next-generation historical scholarship on Chicago’s built environment. Researchers will learn applied skills in Python and QGIS in a hands-on, project-focused environment that seeks to change the way academics, city officials, and everyday people understand the continuities (and often-dramatic changes) in Chicago’s built environment over the past century. Interested in this project? Contact Parker via parkerotto@uchicago.edu for more information.