Observed arrival · 2026-09-13
Chicago's Hand-Colored Building Map
A searchable digital archive of Chicago's Historic Resources Survey, covering pre-1940 buildings assessed across the city's community areas.
Field notes
The repository combines several finding aids rather than presenting a single chronological catalog: an address index, architect and style indexes, building-type material, community-area chapters, and appendices describing the survey method. Its map layer preserves the original field practice, in which surveyors marked roughly sixteen-block outline maps with colored pencil. The seven ratings distinguish potential citywide or broader significance from community-level value, intactness, alteration, and buildings too recent for evaluation.
Observed signals
Read the marks
Editorial observations of this landing page, not a rating.
One card from the complete issue