Street Footnotes

A field guide to reading the places around you

Every block keeps a record.

Learn to follow maps, buildings, photographs, directories, and memory back through time. Start with a question. Let the evidence lead.

A historic street photograph used as general context. The pictured city is not identified as the project’s locality.
Photo: Dominic Chasse. A historic street photograph used as general context. The pictured city is not identified as the project’s locality.

What stood here before?

A street name, a map edge, a shop sign, a memory: each is a clue. Treat it as a starting point, then look for records that can test it.

Open the field guide
Look closely

Read the map as an argument

Ask who made it, when, for whom, and what the map leaves out. Scale and point of view shape what becomes visible.

Follow the paper

Pair records across time

Compare directories, permits, newspapers, photographs, and maps. A change in one source can suggest where to look next.

Keep the seams

Show what you know

Separate dated evidence from later interpretation and remembered experience. Preserve disagreements where records differ.