The Vista, 1888
Map showing dwellings, food/retail locations, vacant buildings, and other locations in the Gervais Street Vista district.
Georeferenced Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of the desired location.
I chose to look back at the Sanborn maps because I work with the maps in archaeology a lot, but usually after they have already been georeferenced and interpreted. For the most part, I have just used them to determine where good places to start digging shovel tests and test unites might be. I think it will be useful for my future in the field to know how to do the preliminary mapping.
Mostly, I wanted to compare the Sanborn map with the area today. What I mostly noticed was the number of dwellings I was mapping. Even as I was in the process of adding them to the feature class, I realized that it was a clear majority. I find this interesting because in the Vista area today, it is mostly retail, shopping, and dining, and the only dwellings are multistory apartment buildings, much different than the layout of the Sanborn maps. I also find the two 'female boarding houses' interesting, they are in such close proximity to each other.
Next, I think it is important to realize that the retail places, restaurants, and groceries, for example, are concentrated towards the center of the map, along Gervais Street. Today, Gervais Street remains an important shopping street and sees constant Columbia traffic due to its accessibility, and routes to the rest of Columbia. It appears that in 1888, the street was used for relatively the same purposes.
Size and scale were the next interesting parts of this georeferencing process. First, it took me almost an hour to georeference the map because I had to use the street intersections and not the block corners. I had to use this process because the blocks were much smaller in 1888 that they are today. The street corners allowed the street center lines to line up properly, and for the blocks to take up the center of the larger blocks that exist today. This is also reflected in the building size; the buildings are a lot larger today than they were in 1888 and fill up more of the real estate in the block area.
The Vista district is less focused on dwellings and more on retail today, but Gervais Street remains a hub for shopping, dining, and resting.
This is really interesting, and I saw a very similar thing in my map. Seeing that the stores, shops, and restaurants are primarily in the same place that they are today is really cool, especially knowing that some of those buildings are probably still there.
ReplyDeleteThis is super interesting to compare the Vista from present day to the past, given that most of us are familiar with the area. I was a bit surprised to see the number of dwellings, but I thin this demonstrates and interesting concept of the expansion of restaurants and retail from concentrated on Gervais street to farther out, encroaching on housing.
ReplyDeleteIt's really cool to see all the changes between the Vista in 1888 and now. I looked at a portion of campus for my map, and I found that there were a lot more dwellings than I expected there to be. Similarly, I expected the Vista to have fewer dwellings, but I was proven wrong on that as well. It's really interesting to see how these areas of Columbia have so drastically changed.
ReplyDeleteI like how you discussed how the culture of the vista has changed from the time period of your sandborn map to current day because it is cool to physically see the changes in a familiar area for all of us.
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