Week 6: Georeferencing Historic Fire Insurance Maps to Modern Day Cities in SC
I decided to use the 1884 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map for Anderson SC, since I grew up down the road and thought I would be able to pick out some key landmarks. I do believe over the years, the roads shrunk or the blocks expanded because as hard as I tried I could not get the historic map roads to match the modern roads' width. I also came across an issue of my program repeatedly crashing on me when I tried to edit the symbology of the buildings I drew in. I finally managed to do so but cut down from my original number of 6 to 4 buildings.
Only one of the buildings I mapped from the 1884 map is still standing in modern-day Anderson, and that is the Historic Courthouse, it has grown since then and is no longer used as a courthouse. Today it mostly holds the 911 dispatch office, a couple local news stations, and some offices. The county jailed has moved across town, and while there is a police station downtown it is a few blocks up from where the 1884 jail resided. I also included a building from the 1884 map that piqued my interest, it was labeled the "Mule shed," and there is another one next to it. Those buildings do not exist anymore so I was interested to see those labeled as such.
How annoying about the software crashing, your maps look great though! I think it is so interesting to see how area and building uses have changed throughout time and your map does a good job showing that.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear your software crashed! Yes, I think road widening and a weird scale with them on the Seaborn maps is to blame, I saw the same thing on my end.
ReplyDeleteNice to see the three maps together--will try that for a future blog!
ReplyDeleteThis milestone gave me heart palpitations but it looks really nice. after it was completed it made me realize I have no idea what I am doing.
ReplyDeleteThese looked great! I tried to do the same with Spartanburg since I grew up there, I thought I would be able to identify landmarks pretty easily. I was wrong, I am severely directionally challenged and ended up going back to Columbia for my maps.
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