Research Guides: Historic Preservation: Images, Plans, and Maps

Databases for digital images of the built environment

ARTstor
Provides high quality, cataloged images of over two million cultural objects.
Art and Architecture Images Collection
Digital images of art, architecture, and other cultural objects acquired for use by the University of Oregon community.

Building Oregon: Architecture of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest
Provides approximately 25,000 images with accompanying documentation about the architectural heritage of the Pacific Northwest with special emphasis on Oregon’s historic sites and built environment. Many items represent works listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Oregon Historic Sites Database
Database created by the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office provides PDF documentation of National Register sites as well as thousands of Oregon works listed in cultural resources inventories.
Sears Home Archive
This database reproduces plans produced by Sears. From 1908–1940, Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold about 70,000 - 75,000 homes through their mail-order Modern Homes program. Over that time Sears designed 447 different housing styles.
Oregon Digital
Digitized photographs, articles, sheet music, manuscripts, ephemera, and more from the collections of Oregon State University and the University of Oregon.
Vintage Portland
A photo blog exploring Portland's past through historical images. Images come primarily from city archives, but many are from UO's Building Oregon.

Building Technology Heritage Library
The Building Technology Heritage Library (BTHL) is primarily a collection of American and Canadian, pre-1964 architectural trade catalogs, house plan books, and technical building guides.
Oregon Historic Sites Database
Database created by the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office provides PDF documentation of National Register sites as well as thousands of Oregon works listed in cultural resources inventories.
Sears Home Archive
This database reproduces plans produced by Sears. From 1908–1940, Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold about 70,000 - 75,000 homes through their mail-order Modern Homes program. Over that time Sears designed 447 different housing styles.
Directory of Street and House Changes, Portland, Oregon (Crane 1933)
Indexes, cross-references street name changes taking place in Portland in 1931.

Fire insurance maps online (FIMo)
The world’s largest online digital collection of color fire insurance maps, real estate atlases, and similar land use maps for North America. Geographic coverage includes Oregon and Washington, and publishers include Sanborn, Nirenstein's National Realty Map Co., Baist, Kroll, and more.

Google Maps
An example of using Google Maps for historic documentation:
http://tinyurl.com/pdxapts
Oregon Historic Sites Database
Database created by the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office provides PDF documentation of National Register sites as well as thousands of Oregon works listed in cultural resources inventories.
Portlandmaps.com
Substantial data about a property and its neighborhood.
Past Portland (PastPortland.com)
Designed to convert historic addresses to current ones, and vice versa, this site contains the records of 235,945 Portland-area addresses, including 14.1% with historic information about the past residents or businesses.

Digital Sanborn maps 1867-1970
Large-scale, detailed, black & white maps of 177 Oregon towns and cities, as well as municipalities in California, Washington, and Idaho
Originally created for fire insurance purposes, Sanborn maps have become a valuable tool for studying the history, growth, and development of cities, towns, and neighborhoods. Users can pan and zoom as well as download PDF versions of each sheet. The MAP Library also has paper versions of many of these maps.

Social Explorer
Maps and reports based on U.S. Census and other data sources, 1790 to present.