For this week’s blog post I took a look at the mapping project called Digital Harlem. Right when you open up the website, the welcome page states “The Digital Harlem Website presents information, drawn from legal records, newspapers and other archival and published sources, about everyday life in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood in the years 1915-1930.” The main reason I chose this specific mapping project is because I recall studying about Harlem during this time in my AP U.S. history class and so I was just curious to see the websites specific take on the subject.
As I thought about Turnbull’s contention that all maps are perspectival and subjective, I realized the extent to which the Digital Harlem Map took this. The Map is extremely subjective in my opinion. Everything that was presented on the map was completely up to the discretion of the person who created the map and website. The website shows harlem broken down into 5 elements that make up everyday life in Harlem during this time period. These elements include Churches, Sports, Number of Arrests, Nightlife, and January 1925. I thought it was really interesting to see these 5 choices the creators made, in summing up the “everyday” lifestyle of people in Harlem.
The map does a fantastic job of physically laying out what the culture of Harlem was like from 1915-1930. There is an immense amount of research that reveals different aspects about the culture, like specific events that occurred in the area, the people that were involved in these events, the locations of where people played sports, and the list just goes on and on. The creator of the website makes it very user friendly with different search tools and filters to find anything specific. Or if the reader wants a broader view of anything searched, the creator leaves that available as well.
I do believe that the map does obscure a lot of things, however not on purpose. It is mentioned that a lot of the sources for this map comes from public records. The issue with this, is that so many stories and information gets lost when things become public record. The public record doesn’t take into account so many things. I believe a good way to fix this, would be to get direct accounts from people that were in Harlem during this time. This would be valuable because it is a direct source to what Harlem was like during this time period.
If I could create an alternate map, it would probably be more emphasized around personal accounts of people in Harlem. Perhaps talking to historians or family members who were told stories of how life was like in Harlem. The map would include giant hotspots like businesses, parks, and schools. Nevertheless, I learned a great amount about life in Harlem during 1915-1930. I commend the creators of the map and website for their thorough work.