Maps and Atlases: Fire Insurance Plans

Fire insurance plans are a good tool for historical researchers who are interested in city planning and building locations.  What is interesting is that these fire insurance plans were originally produced by fire insurance companies to assess insurance risk and rates for fire, an ever-present threat to early Canadian urban centres, consisting largely of wooden dwellings.  A good introduction to the history and content of these plans is found in the Catalogue of Canadian Fire Insurance Plans, 1875-1975, located at the Map Library Service Desk.  This catalogue also identifies all the fire insurance plans published in Canada from 1875 to 1975 and records their location.  A number of these plans are located in the Ontario Archives, the City of Toronto Archives and the Toronto Reference Library.  For the City of Toronto, the York University Map Library has plans for the downtown core of the City for the following years: 1858, 1884, 1889, 1923 and 1954.

 The fire insurance plans ceased in 1975.  Property data maps or cadastral maps have taken the place of fire insurance plans.

A helpful overview of fire insurance plans can be found from the University of Toronto: A Primer on Goad's Atlases and Fire Insurance Plans for Toronto.

At the Map Library:

1. In order to find a Fire Insurance Plan Map you must have a general idea about the area you want, preferably street intersection as this is how the maps and indexes are designed.
2. Once you have a general area location, choose the year you want to look at. Many people find it interesting to look at the Fire Insurance Plans from oldest to newest as they are able to see the progression or changes that have occurred to the same area over time.
3. Once you have selectioned your area and year locate your series index. For Example, if you want to find Queen Street and Spadina Avenue for the 1899 series look at that index as it corresponds to both your desired area and year. Remember the indexes for each year are in that year's drawer (in Map Cabinet #70), or can be found at the beginning of the bound volume of the Fire Insurance Plan.
4. When you have found your desired area on the index take note of the square in which in falls into. This will become your sheet number. Sometimes your area may fall on more than one square, and in this case you will take note of all the sheet numbers that your area falls in. Together all these separate sheets will form your desired area.
5. After you found your sheet number, you are able to find it either in the by browsing through the corresponding map series or within the bound fire insurance plan.

At the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections:

 To access the fire insurance plans, please contact the Archives and Special Collections before visiting.

The Archives of Toronto has Fire Insurance Plans for a variety of years. The earliest is the Boulton Atlas of 1858. Most of the plans cover various years from 1880 to 1924, although there are a few covering mostly industrial and commercial areas of the former city up to the 1940s. There is a multi-volume set covering from 1954 to 1973. The Archives has these fire insurance plans available to view online: 1880, 1884, 1890, 1894, 1899, 1903, 1913, and 1924.

The Toronto Public Library has an online collection of Fire Insurance Plans for a variety of years covering Toronto and communities in Ontario.  To see a complete list of their collection please visit this website.