Burning Buildings
If we look at the 1882 Sanborn Map from Atlascope with the help of its key, we can examine the materials of the buildings, their owners, and potential hazards to safety. The photo on the left is a screenshot from Atlascope of the Sanborn Map from 1882, where one can notice the different red and green coloring of the buildings in this area of Beverly Street. Sanborn Maps were fire insurance maps, so each color was made to represent the material of the building, and its potential danger. Most of the buildings on Beverly Street overall are red, meaning they are composed of brick. It can be noted that a majority of these buildings are green, which if we look at the image on the right, "specially hazardous risks are colored green". This is a clue into what happens next, a handful of fires over the next hundred years.
1856
According to an annual report from the Boston Fire Department, a fire occurred near Beverly St on November 3, 1856. The street noted to have caught fire was Causeway Street, but as you will see in the Changing Hands page, the owners of this property resided on Beverly Street. The occupants listed for the property that caught fire were "Heirs of Luther Goodnow, Dexter Roby and Co". According to the record, the owners lost $1400 worth in damage, but insurance at the time covered almost all of that, $1100. The cause of the fire was listed as a supposed incendiary, meaning that a device made to start fires was used in this instance, perhaps out of malicious intent.
1875
In 1875, the location of 16, 18, and 20 Beverly St caught fire. According to an Atlascope map from 1874, the owner of this property around this time was a man named R H Eddy. The building was five stories tall, and due to the damage, Eddy was insured $6000 as a result. According to the Boston Globe, this was known as the "Beverly Street Blaze". The fire was started in the basement of the building, from an overheated boiler. The wood of the building was noted to have been extremely dry on the inside of this building, and caused the fire to spread very quickly through the first and second floors, despite the fact that it was brick. The owners of the respective floors of the building suffered varying losses, but according to the article, insurance would cover most of it.
We can see that even in the late 1800s, insurance was evidently very helpful in covering the cost of these fires that landlords and business owners had to endure. We also learn that despite many of the buildings primarily being made from brick, they can still very easily catch fire, which can be tied back to the green coloring on many of the buildings on the Sanborn map, denoting a hazard despite the composition of the building.