A House on Talbot Street

Since our historic homes project officially came to a close last week with the installation of the exhibit for ARCC, I thought I would also include my 250-word summary about my property (585 Talbot Street) here as yet another example of how the Public History MA Program at UWO is preparing us to write for the public. It wasn't easy to get 2500 words of research notes into a 250 word summary. I definitely had to leave out salient details in order to create a cohesive blurb, but I think the final product works. You be the judge.

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Built in 1877, 585 Talbot St. became the family home of Laurence Gibson. A successful entrepreneur, Gibson, along with William Yates, was the proprietor of the London Machine Tool Company (est. 1873) which manufactured engines and iron-working tools for machinists, boiler makers and brass finishers. At its peak, the London Machine Tool Company employed between forty to fifty people, making it a significant local employer. In addition to his work as a manufacturer, Gibson also worked as an accountant, an insurance agent and a manager of the Huron & Erie Loan and Savings Company during his lifetime.

The centred gable style of the building at 585 Talbot St. represents a subtype of Italianate architecture which is typical of only 15 per cent of Italianate buildings. The simplicity of this design, combined with the white brick that is characteristic of many of London’s buildings, lends the structure a sense of understated elegance. Typical of the style, the building is largely cubic in shape, has a low-pitched roof with exaggerated eaves and tall windows with gently-rounded tops. Among the building’s most notable features are its intricately carved verge board, elaborate Gothic trusses and the cut stone work of the window crowns. Interestingly, the building only sparingly uses the most common feature of Italianate architecture, paired roof-brackets, to accentuate the top of its pilasters. Considered one of the City of London’s finest examples of the Italianate style of architecture, 585 Talbot St. is an integral part of the area’s aesthetic value and historic streetscape.

First Foray into Exhibit Design

Recently our Public History class put the finishing touches on a major project by installing an exhibit in the Schweitzer Gallery, which is located in the entrance to the Archives and Research Collections Centre (ARCC) inside of the Weldon Library at UWO.

Beginning in September, each public history student was assigned a historic home in the Talbot/Ridout Street area. Our job was to research the historical, architectural and contextual values of the homes, evaluate them according to a numerical rating system designed by members of LACH and present both our findings and our recommendations for the homes at a LACH meeting in December. In addition, we were required to write a 250-word description of the home and its significance that could be used as the text for a walking tour booklet or for a heritage plaque. The culmination of this assignment, of course, was creating a exhibit for ARCC which would highlight our research on some of London's historic gems.

Having never worked in a museum or archive before, this was my first true foray into exhibit design; it was considerably more challenging and time consuming than I had expected it to be.
Thankfully, it was a total team effort and we managed to get the display installed without too many headaches.

Although I am pleased with the end result, there are definitely areas for improvement. For instance, we had far too much text and some of it was repetitive. This could have been solved by taking the time to edit the written portion of the exhibit more carefully. As well, what text we did have needed to be displayed in a larger font so that it would be easier for visitors to read. In our defense, however, our font choices were limited by the amount of text we had and the size of the displays cases that we were using. In such a limited space we could not have possibly gone larger without overwhelming the photographs and further cluttering the design. The aesthetics of the display were also hampered by the numbers, size and type of display stands available for our use (many were already being used in ARCC's other three display cases). Without them it was difficult to vary the height and depth of the mostly 2-dimensional materials.

In an ideal world, I also would have liked to include more items that highlighted how we used the resources that are available to the public at ARCC. From city directories to local histories, fire insurance plans, diaries, artwork, pamphlets, walking tour guides, architectural dictionaries, etc., our public history class relied heavily on both the resources cared for by ARCC and the expertise of their staff. Unfortunately we were once again hampered by issues of space. If we had been given a third case in which to display our work, I am confident that we could have followed through on this aspect more thoroughly.