Maps Don't Only Show You Where You're Going...

...they can also show you where you've been (I mean this in a historical sense). The past week was pretty calm in-terms of what I was doing at work. Amy Hillier had me do some work with a few historic maps. The work she had me doing was in conjunction with her Du Bois project. The task was simple; using the 1896 city atlas, list all the alleys and street names (which differ from the current map) within the Seventh Ward. Without going into a long description of her project, yes, listing street names is very relevant to her work. I don't have an example of the specific map I was using but if you go to Philadelphia GeoHistory's interactive map, and use the "1875 Philadelphia Atlas" you can get a good idea of my map.

A project which I thought would only take me a few hours actually went into a day and a half of work. I became fascinated by the details of the map. The atlas listed all the property owners for the homes and names of businesses. At some point between the printing of the 1896 atlas and the turn-of-the-century was the unification of the alleys in downtown. Most alleys had a different name on each block but out of the unification we have full streets such as Sansom, Delancey and Naudain. I was also able to see a number of institutions in the city such and mental institutions and orphanages. In fact, the Locust on the Park lofts used to be a worsted textile factory.

Historic maps are an amazing resource because they can provide a sense of context you can't find within a book. A historic map can give you enormous amounts of information which, because of the maps relative nature, can suggest trends within a given space. For example, a historic map could show a present-day Philadelphia how Fourth Street, just below South Street, was a thriving Jewish neighborhood. The map would provide an understanding of the number of historic synagogues which are still in use in the neighborhood.

Maps really can show us from where we've come.