Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Lost Neighborhoods and Public History

Over the next few weeks I will be launching a new website and on line research center devoted to the history of Baltimore's current and lost neighborhoods

The objective will be to provide an interactive website and repository for research and writing about the history of Baltimore City from the perspective of time and place, utilizing current and historical mapping to create time and space layers of city-scapes that can be viewed in Google Earth and Google Maps and are linked to the life stories of the owners and occupants of the built city at specific points in time.  For example, the first major undertaking on my part  is the reconstruction of the city and its residents in 1814, the year of repulsing an attack of British naval and land forces, and the emergence of a strong sense of National pride that transcended deep political differences.

The main purpose of the website, however, is to provide an interactive home for the scholarship and electronic files of all those industrious individuals who are documenting and telling the stories of their neighborhoods, assuring their permanence and providing them in a searchable context to which new material can be added and past work can be improved upon.

I am hoping to have the website on line by November 22, St. Cecilia's day, 2014.  Comments are welcome.