Harrisburgs City Beautiful Movement: Mapping the Growth

and Transformation of the Pennsylvania State Capital

Process Paper for a Presentation at the Conference,
Collaborating Digitally: Engaging Students in Faculty Research
Bucknell University 14-16 November 2014

Authors
David Pettegrew (Associate Professor of History, Messiah College)
Albert Sarvis (Assistant Professor of Geospatial Technology and Project Management,
Harrisburg University of Science and Technology)
Jeff Erikson (Assistant Professor of Biology, Messiah College)
Rachel Carey (History Student, Messiah College)
Rachel Morris (Environmental Engineering Student, Messiah College)
Dan Stolyarov (Geospatial Technology Student, Harrisburg University of Science and
Technology)

I. Introduction: Collaboration in the Digital Age

The advent of digital tools in humanities-based disciplines in recent years has opened the
door to seemingly endless possible collaborations across departments and institutions directed
toward student engagement and public good through community-based projects. Our experience
with digital collaboration began last spring when educators working out of three disciplines
History, Biological Sciences, and Geospatial Technologyand two different institutions
Messiah College and Harrisburg University of Science and Technologyjoined forces through
GIS and Digital History courses on a new project to map Harrisburgs rapid growth and
transformation at the turn of the 20th century. We had the grand idea that we could work together
to build an interesting product while also helping our students more fluent in information. Today,
we want to show you the fruit of this collaboration, reflect on the challenges of student
engagement and collaboration, and gather some feedback on next steps. Ill speak first to relate
the Messiah College perspective, and then Professor Sarvis of Harrsiburg University will give
you the perspective of Harrisburg University.

Digital History, City Beautiful and Social (Professor David Pettegrew and Rachel Carey)
The starting point for the course in digital history was an interesting moment in
Harrisburgs history known as the City Beautiful. Between 1900 and 1930, a movement of

beautification and urban improvement transformed the city from a dirty industrial river town into
a splendid state capital with an elaborate capitol park, numerous green spaces, upgraded sewage
systems and pavement, and a booming population. Many of the impressive buildings and green
spaces visible in Harrisburg today were a direct result of City Beautiful. We selected City
Beautiful as a focus for two reasons. First, the City Beautiful movement in Harrisburg was one of
the earliest beautification programs in the nation and therefore historically significant while
routlinely ignored. And second, the topic is relevant to current conversations about improving
Harrisburg. In 2012, a group of citizens in Harrisburg launched City Beautiful 2.0, a
collaborative grass-roots movement to address the citys problems by reclaiming the spirit of the
original City Beautiful movement, and the mayor even made the promotion of this movement a
short-term agenda item in his transition report.
In the digital history course, students worked together on City Beautiful through three
related student projects:
1. In the first project, called City Beautiful, they created an Omeka website devoted to the
original City Beautiful Movement. Working in groups at Dauphin County Historical
Society and the PA State Archives they combed through boxes of documents,
photographs, and letters, and got hands on experience in best practices in photographing,
scanning, and collecting metadata. The final project was very much a collaborative effort
as groups of students developed exhibits for a single Omeka course website devoted to
telling the early history of City Beautiful.
2. In the second project, which we dubbed City Social, students worked from scanned
copies of the United States census records (through Ancestry.com) to create a massive
database of Harrisburgers in 1900 which included social information such as race,
birthplace, and occupation. Students learned how to produce, normalize, and analyze
data, while also working with primary sources (the US Census) and encountering the
ethnic and social diversity of the city in 1900. They learned how databases could open up
new pathways to querying the past, e.g., what percentage of the Russian-born population
spoke English, how many Irish worked at the iron mill, where the nail workers of the city
lived, and how female literacy rates compared with male. While students keyed data
individually, they did quality checks on each others data sets and analyzed it as a class.

3. The third project was to create a Digital Harrisburg website in Wordpress to act as a
portal for publicizing the work of these courses. This also was an individual assignment,
as each student learned to craft polished blog entries for the web. Yet, the overall result
was collaborative as students created a site filled with interesting content about
Harrisburgs history.

When the Digital Harrisburg class first began, the potential for this project was prominent
not only for the students to gain knowledge in a new field, but also for the Department of
History to advance the digital humanities within Messiah College. Throughout this experience,
all those involved in the project have gained knowledge about digital history and firsthand
experience in historical research. The History Department has advanced the study of digital
history at our institution, and the School of Humanities has launched a new Digital Humanities
initiative, which are just beginning to blossom. Through Digital Harrisburg, student and faculty
interaction and cooperation in research has never been more prominent or influential at Messiah.
We do not want to paint an overly rosy picture of the challenges of student engagement
and collaboration. Few of the students liked the process of entering data for 2,000 census
records, and there were frequent complaints about finding time to access the archives, the
amount of work involved, and the cost of parking in the city. Nonetheless, at the end of the
semester, their collective work gave students a tremendous sense of satisfaction. They had
launched two different websites about Harrisburgs history and entered data for 28,000
individuals. In their final blog post for the semester, students spoke about their accomplishment,
their changed view of Harrisburg, their appreciation of public humanities, and collaboration. As
one student commented in her final blog post,
For me, the best part of the course was seeing the entire project come together.
Bringing everyones work together on our Omeka site and seeing the fruits of our
labor, as well as knowing that people are going to benefit from our work made the
entire project worth the work. Even though it was a lot of work, finishing the
project made everything worthwhile.
Another noted how when she drives through the city now, everything looks different: I notice
all of the little things, like the statues, the parks, the steps along the banks of the Susquehanna,
and now I feel a special connection to the Capitol Building and I am in awe of it.

A final productive outcome of the class was that we were able to use our accomplishment
to leverage a work study position for the year, and two students have continued to work on the
project at Messiah, one on the data entry side, the other on the GIS side. Every Monday, from
12-2, Pettegrew and several students gather to work on the project. Rachel Carey has spent the
last six months keying the remaining records for Harrisburgs ten wards and the Dauphin County
Prison, for a total population of 50,029 records. In part, weve been correcting the many mistakes
made in the original record of the census in 1900, and the transcriptions of Ancestry volunteers
and Messiah College history students. Transcription mistakes reflect a lack of familiarity with
fields such as employment, as well as the challenges in reading the handwriting of the 1900
Census takers. However, we have been able to correct many of these mistakes by using the 1895
and 1902 Boyd City Directories and searching for specific citizens to determine the spelling of
their name, their address and employment. But we have also had to normalize our data set in
various ways in order to query it in reliable ways. For instance, in the column of ages of citizens
in the census record, census takers noted children under the age of one either as a 0 or a 1, or
a fraction such as 1/12, which clarified how many months old they were. We convert these
fractions into decimals in order to allow our database to read the value consistently as a numeric
one.

II. Digitizing Polygons at Messiah College (Jeff Erikson and Rachel Morris)
In conversations with Professors Erikson and Sarvis before spring semester began, we
decided that we would marry the census data to geospatial data through a digitized map of the
city in 1901. Ideally, we would have had digital history students work together with GIS
students, but the practicalities of making this happen discouraged this. Nonetheless, students
from three different classes were working on the same City Social project at the same time.
Professor Eriksons class georeferenced the Harrisburg Title Company Atlas as well as
the maps (based on coordinate systems and adjusted to match present day roads and bridges), and
digitized (traced) parcels and entered parcel address information for each individual parcel in
their assigned ward. With 32 GIS students, Erikson had 4 students work on georectifying
Sanborn Maps, and 28 on digitizing the parcels of four different wards. By the end of the term,
students had completely digitized properties of 4 of the 10 wards of the city in 1900 and we were
able to project and pattern the population of Harrisburg in 1900 by a wide range of criteria, such

as occupation, birthplace, and race. Erikson also set up anonymous peer review using google
forms, so that students could critique others work within the same ward. Since the students were
assessing others students work within the same ward, they knew which parcels or addresses
were missing and could critically assess the work.
Our work in digitizing this maps by tracing the polygons has continued this semester so
that the entire 1901 map of Harrisburg has been completed. As Rachel Morris, a senior major in
Environmental Engineering at Messiah, reports on her work this semester:
From a quick glance and outside perspective, my computer screen appears to be
simply purple lines and dots, jumbled with little meaning. Zooming in on ArcMap to take
a closer look, one recognizes street names, companies, and churches of Pennsylvanias
beautiful Capital. Ten distinct wards contain carefully outline and coded shapefiles, with
information provide insight into the people who lived in Harrisburg, early 1900s. This
semester has been exciting to watch the map slowly grow and finally be useful to run
queries integrated from the census data.
We started with twenty one old ward maps, aligned and geo-referenced by streets
and recognizable landmarks. Then the party began, as I created polygon shape files for
the thousands of residencies portrayed on these maps: numbered pink and yellow shapes
turned into purple outlines with reference codes to their location, ward, and
category. During this time, my capabilities and familiarity with ArcGIS increased
exponentially and I continue to learn new tricks and features daily. Collaborating with
other students across disciplines has made the project an even more enjoyable learning
experience: chatting and laughing on Mondays while I draw lines, discussing the history
of City Beautiful, and dissecting addresses that do not match amongst sources. This
project has also been a unique way of learning how to navigate through Harrisburg, as I
now recognize street names when driving through the city and can joke about which ward
we are passing. I originally became involved in the project, after taking an Intro to
Geographic Information Systems class last Spring as part of an assignment. It was a
rewarding project, not only because I could watch movies while coding, but visually
measure my progress and have tangible results. Now working on the City Beautiful
project many hours a week, I realize the substantial value and history contained inside the

maps. My job is more than just creating parallel and perpendicular lines, rather
establishing houses that real people called home many years ago.

III. Harrisburg University and GIS (Albert Sarvis and Dan Stolyarov)
In early January 2014, students in Harrisburg Universitys Applied Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) class were notified of the course requirement for a semester long
applied GIS project. This course builds on the freshman year Introduction to GIS class and
encourages students to explore unique and practical ways to apply GIS technology. Students at
this level in the Geospatial Technology program are encouraged to find opportunities to
collaborate with outside organizations that could benefit from their work. A mapping component
to Digital Harrisburg rose to the top of this list of collaborative projects. Two Harrisburg
University Geospatial Technology students volunteered to work with Messiah College to create
the base map of turn of the 20th century Harrisburg for 1900 US Census data to be displayed
within. One student Dan Stolyarov continued with this project into the fall term of his Junior
year as a three credit Junior Project. The following summarizes the initial work done through
October of 2014.

Step 1: Obtain 1901 atlas map plates and 1900 census data in digital form
Professor David Pettegrew conducted the research into available maps of the late 1800s
to early 1900s. After review of various sources, including several series of Sanborn Fire
Insurance Maps, the 1901 Atlas was generously provided by the Dauphin County Historical
Society. This atlas was compiled from plans, deeds, and surveys and published by the Harrisburg
Title Company. The historical society already had archived digital raster images of the atlas
index plate (figure 1) as well as 21 individual map plates (figure 2) spanning the extent of the
city at that time. These files were shared with HU students via a Dropbox folder. Details such as
building/property owner names, property frontage dimensions and addresses were included in the
detailed plates. The average file size for the high resolution images was 6 to 10 Megabytes. A
compiled spreadsheet containing all census records and attributes was also provided from
Messiah College by the Digital History students.

Figure 1: Harrisburg Title Company Atlas of Harrisburg 1901, Index map

Step 2: Georeference 1901 Atlas maps to 2014 street network using ArcGIS
The 21 individual atlas map plates were divided between two HU students to be
georeferenced to the current 2014 Dauphin County Street network which was provided by the
Dauphin County GIS Department. The georeferencing process required the student to first
identify the extent of the historic map plate and center the ArcGIS base map to the same location.
Once centered, the students second task was to work with the ArcGIS Georeferencing toolbar to
rotate, scale and shift the raster map to obtain the best alignment with the current city base map.
This process primarily relied upon the city street network but aerial photos, a Susquehanna River
layer and even google maps were used as additional reference information for the alignment. The
third and final georeferencing process required the students to create links for coincident features
between the historic raster map and the 2014 street network. These links were created from
Intersections that were depicted on the 1901 atlas maps to the current street intersections. Only
roads that maintained the same relative alignment between 1901 and 2014 were used for link
placement. This new 1901 road layer will allow for the location of census records that may not
be directly linked to the digitized building footprints.

Step 3: Recreate the street network for Harrisburg in 1901 based upon raster atlas maps
The primary challenges to georeferencing the 1901 maps was the addition, removal and
realignment of streets over the last 113 years. In many areas of the city a dramatically different
street network exists today, particularly in the south end where Interstate 83 and its exit/entrance
ramps have been built. With the end goal of locating all of the 1900 city census data records by
address, the 1901 street network needed to be recreated in digital form. Students began this
process by first removing all 2014 street/highway centerlines that did not exist in 1901. This
relatively straight forward process was completed quickly. The second step, however, required
the students to digitize streets from the 1901 maps that are either no longer present, or had a
radically different alignment, into a version of the 2014 street network. Figure 5 depicts a region
of the city where the street network has changed. During this process the students also updated
the 2014 street attribute table to include address ranges from 1901 for both left and right sides of
streets.

Step 4: Harrisburg University Student Dan Stolyarov is currently working to depict the 1900
census data records within the center of the building footprints digitized by Messiah College
students. Building centroids with X and Y coordinate attributes were added to each building
footprint. These points were then joined to the census records effectively providing an X,Y
coordinate for any census record whose address ID field matched that of the building polygons.
An initial 74% match rate was produced and improvements to the match rate are continuing.
As Dan Stolyarov writes about his experience,
My sophomore year I was enrolled into our cartography class which is taught by
Professor Albert Sarvis. Throughout the duration of the semester we were prepared and taught
skills that we were to put into a project at the end of the semester of our choosing. Through
Professor Sarvis I was introduced to Messiah Colleges history professor Dr David Pettegrew
who had goals to create a project with his students that displayed a digital model of Harrisburg
City (streets, buildings, census data and addresses) that existed in 1901. An abundance of this
work was GIS and this was my opportunity to be involved. Another student (Kathleen Piatt) and
I accepted the request and began to produce the foundation of the street network.
The first few steps involved georeferencing 1901 atlas maps to todays center street lines.
We split the maps in half and later joined our data into in database. After georeferencing was
complete we began to either remove street center lines that did not exist in 1901 or digitizing
new streets lines to add to today's street network. When digitizing a street we keyed in the name
of the street, type, and address ranges of both sides of the street into the attribute table. I learned
and abundance of history while researching, and moving forward with this project. It led to show
me that Harrisburg is changing every day. By analyzing the maps it is visible where Harrisburg
has expanded and what businesses were available as to what is now in its place. By analyzing
the census data I have learned that Harrisburg consisted of many immigrants ranging from
various countries. Each building has a range of residents, mostly immigrants. The census data
also had a category for each resident and it indicated whether the person was able to read or write
in English. The information is astonishing and much more analysis can be performed to learn
about Harrisburg. As a junior I enrolled in my Junior Project and chose to continue this project
and bring more awareness to Harrisburgs past.
One aspect of this projected included clipping the atlas maps to delete overlap, irrelevant
text, and blank spaces that were shown on each map. Clipping images required a very careful and

meticulous process. If I clipped too much off of one edge it led to a gap between the plates (atlas
images). I began by creating a geodatabase and then creating a raster mosaic dataset within that
database. Then I clipped each individual image using a polygon drawing selection tool (in other
words cropping) and when finished I have a new layer that I have just clipped. I am then able to
add the newly clipped image into the mosaic dataset. When clipping the images I have to keep
in mind about the surrounding images that also contain vital information. I constantly have to
toggle on and off with those surrounding images to make sure I have not clipped need
information. The end result is a single mosaic dataset with minimal overlap between atlas plates
producing a single seamless raster image map of Harrisburg in 1901. This map will serve as the
background of the subsequent census data analysis.
Working on this project with an outside source has brought many benefits to my
experience. Meeting new people and creating a network is very important and it allows me to
move forward to bigger and better tasks. This project has allowed us to bring ideas together to
create the best outcome. While working with faculty I am being taught new skills in GIS. When
I am collaborating with students we have the opportunity to teach each other. Over all working
with faculty and students has engaged me in 4 of 8 Harrisburg University's core competencies:
civic engagement, team work and collaboration, communication, and critical thinking.