Urban Transition Project

	Data Sources
	County Maps
	Enumeration Districts
	Making Maps with ED Descriptions
	Making Maps without ED Descriptions

Web-Based Maps

Data Download

1880 Maps: Technical documentation

Creating accurate historical maps for cities in 1880 posed several challenges, and it was not possible to complete this task for every city. The Urban Transition Project selected a sample of 39 cities. As shown on the following table, these included the 26 largest cities in the country, from New York (which at that time included only Manhattan and part of the Bronx) with 1.2 million residents to New Haven with fewer than 63,000. Additional cities were chosen mainly to extend the geographic range of the project to include smaller cities in the Midwest (like Kansas City and Minneapolis), in the South (like Charleston and Atlanta), and in the West (like Denver and Oakland).

Cities in Study Sample by Population Size and Rank in 1880

Rank	City	Population	Rank	City	Population	Rank	City	Population
1	New York , NY	1,206,299	14	Washington , DC	147,293	30	Kansas City , MO	55,785
2	Philadelphia , PA	847,170	15	Newark , NJ	136,508	33	Columbus , OH	51,647
3	Brooklyn , NY	566,663	16	Louisville , KY	123,758	34	Paterson , NJ	51,031
4	Chicago , IL	503,185	17	Jersey City , NJ	120,722	36	Charleston , SC	49,984
5	Boston , MA	362,839	18	Detroit , MI	116,340	38	Minneapolis , MN	46,887
6	St Louis , MO	350,518	19	Milwaukee , WI	115,587	40	Nashville , TN	43,350
7	Baltimore , MD	332,313	20	Providence , RI	104,857	43	Hartford , CT	42,015
8	Cincinnati , OH	255,139	21	Albany , NY	90,758	45	St Paul , MN	41,473
9	San Francisco , CA	233,959	22	Rochester , NY	89,366	49	Atlanta , GA	37,409
10	New Orleans , LA	216,090	23	Allegheny , PA	78,682	50	Denver , CO	35,629
11	Cleveland , OH	160,146	24	Indianapolis , IN	75,056	51	Oakland , CA	34,555
12	Pittsburgh , PA	156,389	25	Richmond , VA	63,600	54	Memphis , TN	33,592
13	Buffalo , NY	155,134	26	New Haven , CT	62,882	63	Omaha , NE	30,518

For more information about how the mapping was done, use the following links for:

Data sources
Description of enumeration districts in 1880
Mapping procedures in cities where ED descriptions were preserved
Mapping procedures in cities where ED boundaries had to be reconstructed