PhilaPlace.org has just launched some exciting new features on its map page! Visitors can click on the new “Streets” tab and view enhanced historical maps that reveal in-depth patterns of change over time for specific blocks in South Philadelphia and Northern Liberties neighborhoods. Land-use and census data recreate details and activities on a street, house by house, business by business, for South 4th Street’s “Fabric Row;” the South 9th Street market; the neighborhoods destroyed by the construction of Interstate 95; and the historically African American settlement on Wallace Street in Northern Liberties once known as Paschall’s Alley.

“Through visual representations overlaid on the contemporary and historic maps, visitors can see with a glance how key areas at certain points in time changed in terms of ethnic make-up, land use, and occupation,” explained Joan Saverino, PhilaPlace project director.  For instance, the map for the blocks of South 9th Street shows the dramatic rise in Italian immigrant households in the decade between 1880 and 1900. The I-95 map recreates several square blocks of Front Street as they existed in 1963, before construction began on the Interstate. The entire I-95 swath displaced hundreds of families and destroyed homes including all but a few of the earliest wooden 18th-century houses in what is now Queen Village. “We will add more contextual information in the future…this is a pilot for what we would like to demonstrate on a larger scale, too,” said Saverino.

The maps were produced by one of PhilaPlace’s key partners, Amy Hillier, Assistant Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania, and undergraduate and graduate students who worked under her supervision.   Professor Hillier writes:

In my work as a teacher and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, I create or review a computer-generated map just about every day. I teach students how to use geographic information systems (GIS) to map everything from crime data to block party locations. My own research uses GIS to analyze historical and contemporary disparities in things like the accessibility of healthy foods, exposure to outdoor ads for unhealthy products, and access to mortgages. I can map just about anything that has an address…. or so I thought before working with Joan Saverino and her team on PhilaPlace. PhilaPlace is about sharing stories about neighborhoods where people used to live or currently live. It’s pretty easy to map places that come up in stories, things like the house where someone grew up, the bakery or soda fountain where they went for a treat, and where they were married. What’s not as easy is to map the meanings that people associate with these locations, the things that make them places. Together with student interns from Penn, Drexel, Temple, and Skidmore and some wonderful older adults from the Stiffel Community Center in South Philadelphia, we have been exploring ways to use online maps to help people tell and share stories. In addition to offering some innovative mapping techniques on the PhilaPlace website, we hope our efforts will contribute to a growing dialogue about how GIS technologies can be part of qualitative research.

All of the maps used on the PhilaPlace MAP page can also be found as individual images on our COLLECTION page by searching the word maps (no quotation marks) in the search box and clicking on the media results.