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.

Mapping Whitby's Past

The last few days have been a whirlwind of microfiche, architectural terms and heritage priority ratings as I worked on the heritage designation research project that I am putting together for the London Advisory Committee on Heritage (LACH). As a reward for finishing my Building and Property Evaluation Sheets and my 250-word summary (suitable for use on a historic plaque or in a walking tour pamphlet), I decided to give myself a break from school work.

Of course, 10 minutes into the newest episode of Dexter, my curiosity got the best of me. How many heritage structures had been designated in my own town? How many others had been inventoried as being of historical, architectural or contextual value to my town but had not yet been designated? More importantly, what - if anything - was the Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee (LACAC) Heritage Whitby doing with this information?

The short answer to those questions is this: 55. Roughly 350. And not a whole heck of a lot.

Well, okay. Maybe I'm being a little harsh. LACAC Heritage Whitby does seem to be hard at work doing a number of things in the community. Its members help out with Doors Open Whitby, as well as host displays at a number of community events such as the Brooklin Spring Fair, County Town Carnival, Harbour Days, Harvest Festival, and Heritage Day. Right now they are working on a few more designations, monitoring renovations and alterations to houses that have already been designated and are doing their best to make sure that the planned extension of the 407 into Whitby doesn't irreparably destroy anything worth preserving.

What they don't seem to be doing is making a presence for themselves on the internet in a way that is user friendly or interactive.

One thing that the website does provide is a LACAC Self Guided Walking Tour. Unfortunately, while the PDF file provides the reader with a significant amount of information on local movers and shakers and buildings of historical or architectural importance, it's map leaves a lot to be desired. Faded, crowded and generally difficult to read, I found myself looking at it and thinking: there's got to be a better way.

Eager for an opportunity to experiment with Google Maps and Google Street View, I decided to take the information in LACAC's Heritage Structure Inventory on homes that had already been designated, combine that with the background information provided in the walking tour guide and plot all of this information on a Google Map.

As this was my first time working with Google Maps, I took a few minutes to watch the video tutorial and then I was off and running. The following map is the result of my efforts:

View Designated Heritage Structures - Whitby in a larger map

Although the program is so easy a literate toddler could handle it, I encountered some frustration when I realized that I had plotted a point on my map (416 Centre St. S) that was supposed to represent the location of the Centennial Building (c. 1799). Problem was, Google Maps had already integrated this landmark onto the map of my city... and placed it a full inch and a half away from my location marker. It's not a big deal, but I could see how it could be confusing to someone viewing the map. Also, since Google Street View is still in its infancy, it has a number of kinks to work out, especially in terms of accuracy. Oftentimes the program fails to accurately take you to the location of the marker you've clicked on. Other times it takes you to the correct location, but labels the building with an inaccurate address, once again confusing the viewer.

The final result is far from perfect, but I think that it's a pretty decent start. Check it out and tell me what you think.