Using City Directories to Build Geocoded Historical Maps

John R. Logan, Brown University
Amory Kisch, Brown University
Benjamin Bellman, Brown University
Guixing Wei, Brown University

The Urban Transition HGIS project has been experimenting with methods to improve address geocoding in historical GIS maps from the early 20th Century. A promsing approach is to use the street directories that are included in most city directories in the period. These list streets, their intersections, and house numbers within each block. The challenges to automated mapping are to create an accurate transcription of the street directory, encode information in a usable database, match these data to the GIS street grid and import the information on house ranges into every street segment. This paper will outline the procedures that the team is developing and show their application to a single large city, Philadelphia in 1930.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 31. Emerging Methods: Computation/Spatial Econometrics