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Capstone Project: Mapping Historic Properties in Huntington, West Virginia

Jim Kompanek

Introduction

Small by national standards, Huntington is the second largest city in West Virginia (behind Charleston). It is located at the junction of the Ohio and Guyandotte Rivers, approximately 15 miles east of where Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia come together. Much of Huntington's growth occurred during the first half of the twentieth century and was the result of the rapid growth of numerous industries. Like many cities in the northeast and midwest, Huntington has endured great loss, both in economics and population since the 1960's. This decline lead to the destruction of numerous historic structures, both directly from neglect and fire, and indirectly as a result of well intentioned urban renewal. Even with this, Huntington's golden era left a great legacy of public and private architecture, much of which still stands today. I currently work in the cultural resource management field and have always had an interest in historic preservation, as well as currently live in an early twentieth century American Foursquare in an older neighborhood in the city. The hemorrhaging of population out of the region has slowed in recent years (which has seen a reduction in population from 75,000 to approximately 50,000 today) and a renewed interest in preservation and history is growing in the city. My goal for this project was the combine my interest in GIS with my appreciation in regional history. Ultimately, this project was to assess the current state of and the role of GIS to local and statewide preservation agencies and to determine what lengths historic architecture is documented and mapped in Huntington.

The overall form of this project evolved with the realization of the limitations in both time and the availability of relevant datasets. Initially, I was hoping to combine GIS datasets of historic structures with other datasets to identify those structures (and neighborhoods/districts) which were of most risk to both blight and development. With the realization of these limitations, the general scope of this project was narrowed to the identification of structures listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in Huntington, West Virginia.

Challenges/Process

Ironically, the greatest challenges which faced this project included both too much and not enough data. A plethora of irrelevant data was available but actually useful datasets were rather scarce. In general, all of the contacts I made were extremely helpful and informative but unfortunately could not provide a great deal of data. A summary of contacts made is provided in Table 1. My primary contact was the GIS Specialist for the West Virginia SHPO's office. This SHPO's office is currently in the process of digitizing their architectural survey and architectural site boundaries. These boundaries have traditionally been maintained on paper USGS 7.5 minute topographic quadrangles. They also maintain a GIS database of structures on the National Register, and historic structures identified during cultural resource surveys, but unfortunately, no attribute information (outside of name, code, and address) is actually tied to the data, as they still rely on paper forms. No metadata is currently available for this dataset.  It appears that the GIS program is on going and heavily impacted by time and budget. Although, this project is on going and will likely go on for many more years, great advances have been made. Primarily, properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) are currently available on the West Virginia web portal (www.mapwv.gov), as well as the state's ArcIMS server (www.mapwv.gov). The data obtained from these sources provided the basis of my project.

My secondary contacts, although very polite, were unable to provide any additional data. This included both the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia (PAWV)  and the Historic Preservation Committee (HPC) for Huntington. Although very friendly, the contact I spoke with at the PAWV informed me they had no GIS and really no plans for one. Furthermore, my contact at the HPC indicated the committee generally works on individual projects and hasn't undertaken any mapping projects.

I was able to supplement the data provided by the SHPO's office with other data in the public domain. In addition to the attribute information provided on their ArcIMS server, the Department of Interior maintains two databases of NRHP properties and this database supplemented what was provided on the ArcIMS server. Numerous other clearinghouses were also visited to obtain additional data for the Huntington area. A summary of sites visited is listed below:

National Register of Historic Places @ http://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/wv/Cabell/state.html

National Register Information System (NRIS) @ http://www.nr.nps.gov/

West Virginia GIS Technical Center @ http://wvgis.wvu.edu/

Map West Virginia @ http://www.mapwv.gov/

Seamless Data Distribution System @ http://seamless.usgs.gov/

The National Map @ http://nationalmap.gov/

Maptech Historic Maps @ http://historical.maptech.com/

Digital Sanborn Maps (1867-1970) @ http://cabell.lib.wv.us/pages/resourc.htm

 

Table 1. A summary of contacts made during this data acquisition/assessment project.

Processes

The first step of undertaking this data assessment/acquisition project was defining and refining the scope. Ultimately, this scope was revised and reduced to plotting NRHP structures/districts within Huntington. Secondly, it was necessary to come up with a list of potential contacts. This step was generally simple, as the contacts were identified from a series of Google queries. Once these contacts were made, it was determined the original wide scope of the project was too broad and was reduced to what is mentioned above. Once I could determine what information was available, I began search for suitable additional pieces of information.

These additional (secondary) datasets provided a background for which the NRHP data was overlaid. This posed a serious challenge to final project, as there was so much available data from numerous clearinghouses and other online sources. For example, a transportation layer was obtained from the seamless.usgs.gov site (Figure 1) and two digital orthophotos (Figures 2-3) were available through the West Virginia GIS Technical Center. Historic maps were also available, including a 1902 15-minute quadrangle (Figure 4) and a series of Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps which dated from the late 1800's to 1950's (Figure 5). Generally, the scale of the 15 minute quadrangle was inadequate for plotting individual structures and although the Sanborn maps would have been useful for providing a historic context to the NRHP structures, the act of georeferencing several hundred plates was too labor intensive for this project. Ultimately, based on what was faced during this project, the most important aspect of a data acquisition/assessment project is proper planning. Having a proper scope and final goal is critical to the success of such an undertaking. Having an ultimate goal eases the entire process and minimizes wasted time and resources.

I also believe there is a critical need for further data acquisition in the city. The city is still losing many of its architectural resources to decay and development. A thorough architectural reconnaissance including both mapping and photographing structures would be an important asset; such a survey could be accomplished with the use of a survey grade GPS and digital orthophotos. Unfortunately, at this time there is very little will for such an undertaking.

The last step of this project involved the attempted publishing of the acquired data at geodata.gov. This website is a GIS portal, which is referred to as a Geospatial One-Stop (GOES) which serves as a public gateway and according to its website "is designed to facilitate communication and sharing of geographic data and resources to enhance government efficiency and improve citizen services by making it easier, faster and less expensive for all levels of government and the public to access geospatial information." Unfortunately, this service appears to be severely backlogged and I was unable to get a response to published metadata by the end of this course. I believe resources like geodata.gov will be an important asset to GIS in the future; although it will clearly be limited by the quality and accessibility of the data.

Acquired Data

Figure 1. Road Map of Huntington, West Virginia with National Register properties.

Figure 2. SAMB Aerial Image of Huntington, West Virginia.

Figure 3. USGS DOQ of Huntington, West Virginia.

Figure 4. Portion of the 1902 15-minute Huntington, West Virginia USGS topographic quadrangle (click on image for full size graphic).

Figure 6. Index Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Huntington, West Virginia from the 1930's (click on image for full size graphic).

Conclusions

From the beginning, it was clear that this project was going to face many challenges. In a state in such dire need for new investment, although looked at with pride, historic preservation is often at the mercy of development and population loss. As a result, very few resources were available. Subsequently, it is difficult to determine whether this project was successful or not. I believe it was a success, as although data was clearly limited, I was able to identify the major historic resources in the city by combining various sources (Figure 7 and Table 2) as well as identify resources which may be useful for future projects (Figures 5 and 6). As a result of this project, I learned many things which I will apply to future assessment/acquisition projects;

1) Final goals are critical prior to undertaking any project. For example, to simply have "to map historic structures..." as a goal is greatly inadequate. An ultimate goal gives a purpose and directs research towards it and without, you'll find yourself chasing false leads and not being able to ask the right questions when help is available.

2) A clear scope of work is also essential. Once a goal is established, determining a scope of work is a critical secondary step. These both go hand in hand. Although an ultimate goal may be to map NRHP structures, this too is simply overly vague. With a scope of work, it is possible to focus on obtaining the necessary information and avoid extraneous acquisitions of data;

3) Note taking and documentation is also very important. An early mistake I made was not documenting where some of my data came from. This was a significant problem as most of the data acquired had no metadata. Subsequently, it was necessary to track the datasets down again to determine basic information.

4) Existing data is often inadequate. A problem I encountered early on was that the NRHP ArcIMS image was derived from digitized boundaries on a 1:24,000 7.5 minute topographic quadrangle. As a result, the locations were often up to 50 or 100 m off of the actual location. Once this was determined it was necessary to readjust the points and polygons accordingly based on the DOQ. Ideally, I would like to have verified all of the points with a GPS (as well as photograph each structure).

5) Although seemingly contradictory to the above lessons, when undertaking a acquisition/assessment project (even one only ten weeks in length), it is necessary to adapt and overcome the challenges faced. This was one of the more difficult problems I faced during the course; there was generally very little data out there and it was necessary to adjust both the project goals and scope accordingly.

If I had the opportunity to start this project over again, I would have devoted more time to finding additional sources of information. Because of the limited length of the course, it was too difficult to get to get in touch with additional contacts in such a short period of time. Earlier on, it would have been better to have devoted more time into finding people; although, looking back I'm not sure if this was really possible. Ultimately, I was able to acquire and integrate a great deal of relevant data and believe that even though I faced many challenges, the ultimate goal of the project was reached (Figure 7 and Table 2).

 

Figure 7. NRHP Structures and Districts in Huntington, West Virginia (click on image for full size pdf).

Table 2. Summary of NRHP Structures and Districts in Huntington, West Virginia.

This document is published in fulfillment of an assignment by a student enrolled in an educational offering of The Pennsylvania State University. The student, named above, retains all rights to the document and responsibility for its accuracy and originality.