Blog #4

For this assignment, I georeferenced sheet 00129 from the 1895 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map. This sheet depicts the portion of the West Village neighborhood in Manhattan bound by Little 12th Street, Greenwich Street, Bethune Street and West Street. The map appears to have georeferenced successfully, and with seemingly little error. There are a number of features on the historical map that are particularly notable. Prominent on the map is Gansevoort Market, which dominates the upper portion of the map. In addition, the historical map features what appears to be a fairly industrial area. There are numerous factories and mills labeled on the map, including a plaster mill, a paint factory and a furniture factory. After georeferencing this map, I noticed that in addition to the numerous factories, there were also a large number of stables labeled on the map. Consequently, I decided to digitalized all the buildings listed as stables. Tracing the stables revealed that there is a stable on almost every city block featured on this map. The high number of stables in this area is likely due to the heavy industrial presence; due to the quantity of production that occurs in this area, a consistent source of transportation would be necessary to move goods, and in 1895 horses would play a heavy role in the transportation of these goods. In addition, Gansevoort Market would also require the use of horses to move around goods. By digitizing stables, I also noticed that there are more stables located on the blocks closer to the Hudson River. This is perhaps because of the wharfs located along the river, and the need for horses to move goods to and from the piers.

When making this map I couldn’t remember how to remove the background white from the historical map. If I were to do this again, I would remove the background white or make the georeferenced map more transparent.