Historiarum

It feels much less than four months ago that we began working our way through the process of historical mapping. This certainly was a demanding class, but I feel that the payoff was well worth it. In the end I was able to incorporate not just a lot about what we learned theoretically about creating historical maps, but also most of the technical skills that we struggled to master become familiar with during the semester. Despite my initial difficulties with the heinous Pen Tool in Illustrator, I was able to use it to color 3 maps that contextualized the two stadiums in their respective neighborhoods. I also made good use of the SketchUp model discussed in the last post, and think it was very useful in making comparisons with the professionally produced model of RFK Stadium. With the two models it was easy to demonstrate the differences in the way fans experienced the space both within and outside of the stadiums. I think the modest conclusions I came to (which you can read in the pdf files below) open up a number of avenues for further inquiry. For example, did the central and synthetic presence of early parks within their neighborhoods influence the social consciousness regarding baseball? Was baseball’s prominence related to this spatial prominence? Similarly, it would be fascinating to chart the growth of the piecemeal style ballpark with the growth of the buildings surrounding it and see what correlations there are and what conclusions that might lead to.

Below are pdf files of the final, ready-to-print, layout.

Page One
Page Two
Page Three

Share This

I’m not sure I bit off more than I can chew in choosing to rebuild Griffith Stadium, but it’s certainly very close. SketchUp has proved to be one of those pieces of software you can really immerse yourself in; as in, “Wow! It’s 4am and I can’t feel my legs-I better go to bed!” Once I had the more rudimentary tasks down I became more and more frustrated by the limitations of the basic shapes. Especially since my building was filled with odd shapes and junctions. At times it became a fairly tedious process of trying to make point A line up with point B without affecting points C and D. For example the support beams I built to hold up the bleachers and roof proved extremely difficult to properly align, and I am certain that in the real world my building would topple over quickly.

However, any time you get to spend with your source material is time well spent, and working these photos and maps over in an effort to build the model really proved revealing. For example, I anticipated being able to get a feel for how it would have looked to sit in the seats at Griffith Stadium, and develop the sense of intimacy that old parks were known for. But I also came to understand that the sight lines one had beyond the stadium were also different than what we have grown accustomed to. Namely, it became possible to see the surrounding area, giving a sense that the park was part of the neighborhood. This makes sense when one thinks how these parks were generally built in more central locations rather than on the far edges of town.

Overall, despite the immense amounts of time SketchUp required to produce a viable model, I found it particularly rewarding. The results, along with some of the source images are below:

Share This