PlaceLayers › Glossary › Paint, varnish, oil and chemical storage
What does “PAINTS” mean on a Sanborn map?
PAINTS is one of the ways a Sanborn surveyor lettered paint, varnish, oil and chemical storage onto a building footprint. Sanborn abbreviated hard, because the words had to fit inside the building.
How it appears on the sheet
PAINTS VARNISH OIL OIL TANKS CHEMICALS TURPENTINE
Storehouses annotated with the stored commodity, sometimes with tank diagrams and capacities.
Why people look for it
Bulk solvent and oil storage is a documented historical use category. 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.