504 E. Jefferson

Because of inclement weather and subzero temperatures, Goshen College cancelled classes for today and tomorrow, but we were still assigned a blog post about our house history projects. Since I have written about almost all that I've done, I just decided to include my observations and experiences in the field from my Google drive folders.

Experience from the Field: 

1/24/2014 

It was snowing. I drove to Jefferson street and parked right by 504 E. Jefferson. I got out of the car and took a few pictures of the house when a woman [presumably the woman who lives there] came outside. Dialogue: Woman: Why are you taking pictures? Me: I’m doing a history of the neighborhood for a class project. Is that okay? Woman: Yeah, just curious. Goes back inside.I continued to take some pictures down the block, then turned around, got in the car, and drove away. There were two men who were watching me from across the street. The woman seemed grumpy.

Observations/Research

1/24/2014  

I did a little bit of googling and found out that the house was constructed in 1880 and was purchased by Barbara and John D. Gorsline for 70,000 dollars. I suspect that the Gorsline couple rents 504 e. Jefferson out. I looked up Barbara Gorsline and she was not the woman that I saw emerge from the house. There isn’t record of rentals on the property data from Elkhart County, however. The address that Google gave me for the Gorsline couple is 1609 S. 15th St, Goshen, Indiana. I also think the house may be Queen Anne style because of the porch, and the asymmetry, but I will have to look into architectural style further to be sure.

After reading Colleen's comment from my last blog post, I started to think about the historian's role in public records. All of the information that we are researching for this project is public. This blog is public. A public historian's whole career revolves around public information and presentation. I don't feel as bad anymore about researching an individual person's home.

experience and ethical debates

Well, it's good that I'm taking a class called 'Public History', because I don't think I have actually ever done any public history. Aside from class assignments, I have never synthesized information to present for public viewing. My experience with history as my major has been strictly for professors, term papers, and maybe an occasional presentation. I have worked with the community in other ways, but never to write or provide a history of a place or people. For my undergraduate thesis, I am planning to write a history of Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College. Reading through Nearby History: exploring the past around you has given me tips and more of an understanding about documents in the public sphere. The history of a place is different from other types of history.

We're using Nearby History for our house history projects. Chapters three, four, and five focus on documents and acquiring information. The published sources that I thought would be applicable for the East Lincoln Crossroads neighborhood are these: directories, maps, government documents and newspapers. The unpublished sources: census records, federal records like draft records, city records, deeds, property records, wills, and genealogy. That's a lot of stuff. Since I have very little experience with actually researching an area, it was great to read an outline of  essentially how to do it. So much information is available about this neighborhood, but it takes time, effort, and love of history to dig it out. I finished reading the chapters with this thought. Public history is a lot of things, but it's definitely not easy.

I took a trip to the East Lincoln Crossroads neighborhood this weekend. I snapped a couple pictures of my assigned house before a seemingly bothered woman came out and asked me why I was taking pictures of her house. I was a little flustered, but explained that I was doing a history of the neighborhood for a class project and asked if it was okay. She said that it was, but she was just curious. I tried to be inconspicuous by taking pictures of other houses on the block, but I don't really think it worked. I'm struggling with the ethics of this project. It seems odd to me that I would research somebody's home without telling them that I'm doing it. I'm looking into a significant part of their life, how much they pay in taxes, what they paid for their home. Houses are so intimate. I'm looking into their neighborhood as an outsider. I'm criticizing it at face value. It seems wrong. I think that next time I go back to look at the house, I will introduce myself. I'd rather have consent to write on somebody's house than feel guilty for invading their privacy.

Here is a picture of 504 E. Jefferson street.

a buried treasure: flatware

My initial thoughts while reading chapters 9 and 10 in Nearby History were questions concerning the differences in types of preservation. Luckily, those differences are outlined in chapter 10.

For my own sake, here are those definitions.

• Preservation focuses on the maintenance and repair of existing historic materials and retention of a property's form as it has evolved over time.
• Rehabilitation acknowledges the need to alter or add to a historic property to meet continuing or changing uses while retaining the property's historic character.
• Restoration depicts a property at a particular period in its history, while removing evidence of other periods.
• Reconstruction recreates vanished or non-surviving portions of a property for interpretive purposes (200).

The government does play a large role in historic restoration in America, but I cannot imagine it any other way. Without government involvement, there would be nothing left to protect. This is outlined by our national parks. Without Teddy Roosevelt's decision to block off large sections of land, they would be exploited for natural resources and development. That's not to say that there is no exploitation within the NPS, but compared to the private sector, they've done a pretty good job at keeping the space available for all of America.

At the beginning of the 65 page National Historical Preservation Act of 1966, part of the description states:

(5) in the face of ever-increasing extensions of urban
centers, highways, and residential, commercial, and
industrial developments, the present governmental and
nongovernmental historic preservation programs and
activities are inadequate to insure future generations a
genuine opportunity to appreciate and enjoy the rich
heritage of our Nation;

I interpret this section to mean that in the midst of 'progress,' the NHPA of 1966 was put into place to counter this progressive movement for the good of the next generation and the preservation of history. It states that the contemporary policies weren't good enough to keep progress from interfering with history.

I found it interesting to read chapter 9, on landscapes and buildings, and to compare it to the work we will be doing for East Lincoln Crossroads. To be a true historical preservationist, I think you have to have a very detail oriented mind. Looking for specific details in the community, like differences in streetlights, manholes, counting churches, and viewing the neighborhood by night and day. It also mentioned the 'backyard archaeologist' which I found to be an intriguing delight. At one point, the book stated that flatware was a great thing to find because it's easily dated. I wonder how many spoons and knives of my parent's wedding silver could be found in my old backyard? What would that say about my childhood? About 1987 when they were married? I distinctly remember using them as digging tools, to my mother's extreme discontent.

The book mentioned the cycle of construction, abandonment, conversion, and demolition. I think that this is the natural process of life, and includes the lives of buildings and land. Things are born, live, and die, and from them, new life emerges. In the case of buildings, that death can come from neglect, abandonment, or in pursuit of better things. In ecological terms, human beings have a somewhat mutualistic relationship with buildings. We depend on them for our safety, warmth, community. They depend on us to keep them in good condition. But buildings stand much longer than humans live, and degenerate after we are gone or are changed in ways that we aren't in control of.

I really do wonder what happened to all of my mother's flatware.

east lincoln preservation project

For a house history project, it's tempting to select a beautiful, old, relatively kept-up house. But if you really think about it, that choice would lead to a selective history - a history of the elite, most likely. And how is that really different from the centuries of history that already exist? One of the best parts about public history is that it shows history from many different angles and perspectives. East Lincoln Crossroads neighborhood is a diverse collection of stories waiting to be told. Why should we focus just on those whose stories are the most beautiful? To be a true public historian means to look at history of the commons. That's what I think we're going to explore this semester.

I noticed a few houses that I would be interested in studying, but decided to take my own look later on before I made a decision. The houses I noticed at first were older and bigger, but not necessarily those that are in the best condition.  I liked the ones that had been split into multiple apartments, because that is a sign that changes have been made in the house's life story. George W. McDaniel used an interesting metaphor in his chapter of Public History to describe the value of a house history. He says that the 'skin' of a house, the shell and the reality of its story, comes from an accurate and intriguing presentation. The skin of the story is what makes historic houses real and tangible. McDaniel says that "they put skin on the abstraction of time past." The way they are managed, maintained, and their interpretation and presentation of that history - a combination of both the academic historian's and the public historian's work - is important.

Whichever house I choose, I'm sure that it will have a story to tell me. Whether it is a story of grandeur or the slow deconstruction of greatness, there will be something. In East Lincoln, I believe that the houses which have a dynamic history, both great and plain, should be preserved, valued, and restored to their former greatness.

house history

For today, our class took a field trip to the East Lincoln Crossroads Neighborhood in Goshen, Indiana. Located just a couple miles away from the college, it's astonishing how much houses and the neighborhood changes. I noticed that as the streets move toward the railroad tracks, the houses become a little bit more beat-down and it looks like socio-economics get a little lower. The houses themselves were beautiful once, and still hold incredible value to the neighborhood as a district. They are unique and beautiful, each in their own way.

The East Lincoln Crossroads Neighborhood, Goshen, IN

I remembered some of the questions about neighborhoods from Nearby History as I was walking around with my classmates.

How is the neighborhood defined? What is it's central focus? How and why have the size of the size, shape, and image of East Lincoln Crossroads changed over the years? When did it shift from grand, big, houses to run-down reflections of those same houses? How were the houses remodeled? What does socio-economics have to do with it? Why did these shifts occur? Who even lives in these houses? Who did once? What are the social dynamics of the neighborhood?

I came with questions, and left with even more. 

My own house, Kenwood House is owned by Goshen College, and while it is not in the East Lincoln Crossroads, continues to spark my interest in house history. We live on 8th street, and on our walk today, I noticed that 8th was more kept-up and had more beautiful and grand houses. They were generally clean and large. I love the house I live in for its character. We have bay windows, an ornate staircase, and high ceilings. The house is entirely made of wood. We also have a fireplace that had carved wooden detailing. I don't actually know if it functions, because we aren't allowed to have fires.

"Hanging Out"

Kenwood House

  

Houses and neighborhoods offer such a rich and wonderful aspect to public history. Why wouldn't we study these? They are both history-from-below and elitist history. They show the ornate and the disheveled. The beautiful and the plain. Neighborhoods carry significance. They are the places where people are born, mature, marry, grow, play, learn, socialize, grow old, and die.  They have their own lives and stories. They are life. 

What Is Public History?

Patricia Mooney-Melvin seeks to redefine the field of history. She says that history should be introduced in schools, not in a fact-memorization stagnant way, but instead as an interactive and question-seeking manner. Children should learn how to synthesize and understand history in a way that is meaningful to them. Instead of so rigidly defining the career paths of the history undergraduate or the history graduate, she wishes to see history as a broad dynamic of opportunities, rather than simply following the path to academia. That's where public history comes in.

Public history is the erratic and quirky child of academic history. It thrives from a multitude of sources and colors outside of the set lines and standards. Public history engages the young, the old, the student, the life-long learner. It is how history is made common. That said, public history is not a "weak" history. In fact, public history takes considerable effort and thought. It is interesting that the development of the field started after the so-called "period of crisis" in the 1970's where the historical community lost its sense of common purpose. There were too many professional historians, and not enough jobs for the graduate scholar-historians. Public history emerged as an option for those who were already employed as historians in nonacademic settings. There was a lot of debate in the following years about what makes a historian a professional, and if public history could be included under the umbrella of 'professional.' 

Ultimately, the Public History Movement took hold, and began to shape the way that history was viewed and interpreted. There began to be graduate programs specifically for Public History as well as continued on-the-job training for interpreters and archivists as well as others. Apprenticing Public Historians usually partner with a close-by museum or independent institution where they can build relationships and work toward success. Public History programs differ from Academic History programs, but they all utilize the same basic historical principles. 

The National Council of Public History, as stated on the homepage, was created to:

"inspire public engagement with the past and serve the needs of practitioners in putting history to work in the world by building community among historians, expanding professional skills and tools, fostering critical reflection on historical practice, and publicly advocating for history and historians."

Their website features all of the basic information, but is uninviting to the non-professional. The interface of the website is boring, and although they have attempted to spice it up by adding recent social media interaction, like tweets, it could be a much more engaging website. The colors are bland and the layout is out-dated. At first glance, it looks like a website from  2005, straight from the HTML code. I think that with some up-to-date interface work, the NCPH website could be much more appealing to different people while conveying the information they want to in a clear manner.  The "What Is Public History" headline gives very basic information about public history as a field. Instead of outlining the information with headings and text, the interface could be interactive, with pictures and animations to draw the eye and catch interest.