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Former industrial use, and why a buyer reads old maps
The reason a historical map is worth an hour of a buyer’s time is not curiosity. Under the federal framework for contaminated land, a purchaser who does not carry out an appropriate inquiry into a property’s past can end up carrying responsibility for contamination that somebody else caused.
All Appropriate Inquiries, in plain words
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act — CERCLA, the Superfund law — makes owners of contaminated land liable for cleanup, including owners who had nothing to do with the contamination. Congress later created defences for a buyer who conducts All Appropriate Inquiries before taking title. In practice that inquiry is a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment carried out by an environmental professional, and historical sources — fire insurance maps, topographic maps, aerial photographs, city directories — are a standard part of it.
The order matters: the inquiry has to happen before you acquire the property.
The uses that get attention
Some historical uses come up again and again in due diligence, because they involved fuels, solvents or metals in quantity. Reading the lettering on an old sheet tells you whether the conversation is worth having.
Filling stations and garages
Underground tanks, dispensers, waste oil. The corner lot that was a blacksmith in 1890 and a filling station in 1925 is the classic sequence.
Dry cleaners
Chlorinated solvents were used at small commercial premises, often on ordinary shopping streets, and often next door to housing.
Coal gas works
Gas holders, retort and purifier houses appear on nineteenth century sheets in most American cities of any size.
Foundries, plating and mills
Metals, plating chemistries, boiler operations, coal handling and rail sidings, usually drawn in detail.
See how each use is lettered on a sheet
What it costs to ask properly
A Phase I Environmental Site Assessment is a defined product with a market price. Published ranges run from about $1,500 to $6,000 and above; most quotes for ordinary commercial property fall between $2,200 and $4,000, and the regulatory records database package that consultants buy is commonly around $375 of that. Lenders ask for one more often than they used to, and on a deal with a deadline the turnaround matters as much as the fee.
Cost calculator When one is usually discussed
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