Edward Redmond had no trouble showing a group of about 10 visitors circled around him Wednesday morning the locations of several familiar Southeast landmarks on a map of Capitol Hill: Pete’s Diner, the Starbucks on Pennsylvania Avenue and the Cannon House Office Building.
But Redmond, a Library of Congress cartographic reference specialist, wasn’t looking at a typical tourist map, and his visitors — Capitol Hill residents — had a much more intimate knowledge of the neighborhood than the average tourist. He was examining a 1903 map that detailed the Hill’s streets down to the physical characteristics of the houses on each block, making it easy to identify where modern-day structures would have fit into the city’s grid more than 100 years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment