Digitizing 1923 buildings in my hometown, Summerville, SC

 I suspect that our blog posts this week are going to be a bit less analytical than those in previous weeks, given that we were largely learning how to georeference historical maps and digitize features.  Click, click, click, click.  Below, please find a georeferenced map of my hometown, Summerville, SC, in June 1923, with a few blocks of buildings digitized.

There were several steps in the process that did surprise me as I georeferenced and digitized features.  First, I was not totally surprised that the blocks in downtown in 1923 more or less matched the blocks today, given that I chose the downtown area to georeference.  (There was even a little bend in the road on the bottom right corner of the map that is still there.)  I was surprised, however, to learn that the railroad tracks were in exactly the same place since I know that there have been many changes to the rail lines themselves across the SC Lowcountry.  There were some fun buildings to find: a coffin shop, a painter, a traveler's inn (located along the railway, as one would expect), a vacant cotton warehouse.  That area was far more residential than it is today (there are only a few houses scattered among the stores there now), but again, that is no big surprise, given how much more populated Summerville is today than it was 100 years ago.


In terms of learning, I was surprised at how badly I clicked on the corners of buildings--especially after watching Wright's expert, meticulous building outlining.  I did learn eventually that the closer in I zoomed, the closer I could get the points at the edge of buildings, which usually made for a cleaner, more rectangular outline. 

Although the process was largely a data entry process, I was equally surprised at how much interpretation was left in my hands as the digitizer.  Is the "S" for "store"?  Were the tiny little structures at the back of houses privies, sheds, or something else?  It was easy to tell which structures were stables with their big Xes, but the other small structures--for which I created a category of "outbuilding"--could have been multiple things and may not even have been associated with the larger buildings nearby.  Given that the land seemed to be divided in "plots," I often--through the Notes column in the Attribute table--suggested where I thought a building was an outbuilding to a nearby Dwelling or Commercial building.

Questions I still have:

  • Once I had clicked on one of the editing tools (like "Edit Vertices"), I found it hard to turn off and often just opened another tab, then went back to the editing tab.  There must be an easier way!
  • Although I am familiar with (but did not master) creating a template to "pre-fill" some information as I worked on buildings, say, going down one street, I am wondering if there is a way to set the attribute table up for a drop-down menu?
Finally, I would note that the modern-day basemap in ArcGIS for this area of Summerville is actually a terrible basemap!  There are many missing buildings--as the "imagery" view shows--and I would say that there are more missing buildings than represented ones.  Given that this is the downtown area of Summerville, this lack of inclusion of buildings cannot be because the buildings are new (indeed, they are not!), so I wonder why the basemap excludes so much information.  I tried the greyscale map, but it was even worse.

Comments

  1. Sara R.October 1, 2023 at 4:10 PM

    My biggest issue was trying to put points. No matter how hard I tried it just wouldnt cooperate for me. Then I had issues with the legend. Over all though it was kinda fun tracing all those little houses.

    ReplyDelete

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