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What does “LAUNDRY” mean on a Sanborn map?

LAUNDRY is one of the ways a Sanborn surveyor lettered laundry onto a building footprint. Sanborn abbreviated hard, because the words had to fit inside the building.

How it appears on the sheet

LAUNDRY STEAM LAUNDRY WASH HO.

Building with boiler room and stack marked, sometimes with a separate drying room.

Why people look for it

Later laundry operations sometimes added dry cleaning on the same premises. That is a reason to read the sequence of editions rather than one sheet, and to ask an environmental professional what it means for your transaction — not a finding about any property.

Reading it properly

Note the edition year. The lettering describes that year only.
Check the previous and next editions. A use that appears once may be a survey artefact; a use across three editions is a pattern.
Read the neighbours. Adjacent uses matter as much as the parcel itself.
Take the sheet, with its citation, to a qualified professional rather than a summary of it.

Browse Baltimore sheets Full decoder

A word on a map is not a finding. It records what a surveyor was told or saw on one date. It does not establish how a site operated, or what is in the ground. Methodology and limits.

What does “LAUNDRY” mean on a Sanborn map?

How it appears on the sheet

Why people look for it

Reading it properly

Other terms