Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Connecticut/Archive 1

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Merger/redirect/other issues for CT NRHP articles

There have been some disagreements about presentation of CT NRHP places in wikipedia, whether certain ones are to be covered in individual articles or covered in articles about towns or CDPs that include them. There are similar issues and sometimes the same editors who have taken differing judgements. Let's note and discuss items of possible disagreement here.

Various historic district articles with resolved or no issues

Stafford Hollow Historic District

  • Stafford Hollow Historic District, currently a redirect to town article Stafford, Connecticut. Could this be a separate article, and cover NRIS county location issue for it (by identifying county in article and covering NRIS error in the article and/or in Talk page)? Polaron in response at User talk:Doncram to my question at User talk:Polaron says he does not now object to there being a separate article on the historic district. --Doncram
 Done Resolved then. I've started the historic district article as an NRHP stub, replacing the redirect. doncram (talk) 22:03, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, but I don't see this one as resolved. It appears to me that Polaron has not agreed to this, but rather has bowed out after concluding that life is too short to spend engaging in stressful discussions of relatively minor matters in the face of the strong attitude of article ownership displayed by NRHP mavens. I personally think it's ridiculous to maintain two separate articles about a small historic village like Stafford Hollow. The fact that local people got Stafford Hollow listed as an historic district does not somehow justify two articles about the village. --Orlady (talk) 15:42, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
(discussed further below in this section....)
FTR, I've expanded the article slightly with some historical info on the village and moved it to Stafford Hollow, Connecticut. As I see it, the village is the primary topic, and the fact that it's an historic district is secondary. --Orlady (talk) 17:03, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
I guess FTR = For the record? Thank you Orlady for adding material and for returning here to mention your moving/renaming it. The way this has been done, there is a redirect from the NRHP name for the place, and there is no issue about disambiguation pages (as is the case for some other CT HD articles) . Also I can imagine that there will not be great difference between "Stafford Hollow" vs. the historic district, and here i do not object to it being moved to the village name. I have, however, revised the article slightly to include "Stafford Hollow Historic District" in bold in the lede, to explain to some readers why they arrived at this article. By the way, though, I wonder what is a "village" in Connecticut? Is it a taxing district or does it otherwise have any formal boundaries? It would improve the article perhaps to provide an informative wikilink for what a village in Connecticut is. Thanks. doncram (talk) 12:44, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
As a general rule, "villages" in Connecticut have no legal status. Some have post offices, however, and a few might be treated as Census CDPs. Typically, villages in Connecticut were formed either as the town center (most of this type date from the 17th and 18th century) of an agricultural town or as an industrial village inhabited by the employees of a factory (most examples of this type date from the 18th and 19th century). --Orlady (talk) 16:29, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. I also found my way back to one old discussion, about Georgetown, in which linking "village" to Administrative divisions of Connecticut#Village, neighborhood, section of town was advised. It explains/asserts that in in CT, villages have little definition. Which I think would usually make it difficult to assess how much overlap there is between one and a historic district. But, anyhow, will try linking the word "village" to that in this Stafford Hollow, Connecticut article now. Thanks again for your followup. doncram (talk) 18:52, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Villages are not well defined but in cases where the surrounding territory is rural and no other villages are in the immediate vicinity, it is quite obvious where a village ends. Other times, there are obvious geographic features that delineate villages. Villages that are prinicipal communities are also marked with road signs when you enter them via a state highway. Finally, it is quite easy to see how a village and historic district are related if one can plot the polygon vertices of a historic district (found in the NRIS database) and overlay them on a map of the area. --Polaron | Talk 20:03, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Polaron has described the "village" situation well, IMO. It's likely that the Stafford Hollow village and historic district are one and the same (identical). However, the link to Administrative divisions of Connecticut#Village, neighborhood, section of town is an OK addition to the Stafford Hollow article. --Orlady (talk) 20:37, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Orlady inserted a point above to state that disagreement continues. Orlady, I think you're missing, right now, that the original question was whether Stafford Hollow HD should be allowed to exist only within Stafford, Connecticut about a much larger area, not within a Stafford Hollow, Connecticut article that did not exist at the time. I believe that Polaron concurs that splitting it out from Stafford is good, and has not been browbeaten into that. The current article, now at Stafford Hollow, Connecticut and including clear, bolded mention of the NRHP HD name in the lede, and including at least some other sourced coverage about the town, is okay I think by all parties here. I could argue that the article should be at the NRHP HD name, with the "village" Stafford Hollow name being a redirect, especially if there were no sourced statements about the town, but currently this seems like a much lesser issue than the original situation. And, basically, it looks to me like a newbie NRHP editor would feel comfortable about adding material about the NRHP HD contributing properties to this article, and would be welcome to do so. Orlady, could you clarify if you really do mean to disagree about something about the current situation, here, now? doncram (talk) 00:38, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Gosh, my face is red. I was confused by the big check mark saying "Resolved," indicating that you had set up separate articles. --Orlady (talk) 01:04, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
No problem. Yeah, it wasn't resolved right then, either. Hey, this Talk page is over 200kb and, although it is organized pretty well, it still would be hard for anyone else to understand that consensus on many points has been emerging here. A voice or two chiming in at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion#various Tolland County, Connecticut NRHP HDs to confirm my assertion that there's consensus that the most obvious redirects should be deleted, would be appreciated. doncram (talk) 06:44, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

about creating maps

(split out from Stafford Hollow HD discussion)

Polaron, what set of polygon vertices are you referring to? Do you have the NRHP database in some form not generally available to the public? And if it is publicly available, how can it be seen for this village? Perhaps your judgments here are elsewhere are informed by information you have not shared. I am vaguely aware that there is some NRHP info available in a Google Earth map layers system, but I am not aware that provides polygon maps of historic districts. Anyhow, do you have the ability to create a map showing the HD boundaries? That would certainly help resolve many questions. Would you be willing to create a map here and/or in other situations? I would greatly prefer to help sort out what is correct information and to include maps into the relevant articles. doncram (talk) 00:13, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

If you download the Access database file (.mdb file), in addition to the main database, there are extra tables for point coordinates, centroid coordinates of polygons, and vertex coordinates of polygons. I suspect this is also the case for the .dbf file but I have not looked at that yet. The Google Earth layer shows you the point coordinates and the centroid coordinates of polygons, but no polygon data. Now, The coordinate information in the NRIS database is in UTM format. In order to overlay that on existing maps, one needs to convert each vertex (usually 20 to 30 vertices for each distrcit) to the usual latitude and longitude system. To create the polygon, you just connect the vertices in the order listed. I have attempted to make maps of historic districts from this data but not being a GIS expert, I was able only able to make one after some effort and I am not 100% confident about the accuracy of the coordinate transformation. If you know of someone good at GIS stuff, the data is there and making maps is possible. --Polaron | Talk 01:16, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate your sharing this. There are several NRHP participants, including Daniel Case, Dudemanfellabra, Ebyabe, Ruhrfisch and TonyTheTiger, who create maps. However, I am not sure that the lists of UTM coordinates that you found are sufficient for map-creating. They might be enough to sort of describe a given district but could be a waste of time to use, because they may be just a partial list of coordinates and inadequate to show the actual shape of an HD area (even ignoring curved boundaries that would require infinite numbers of coordinates to approximate perfectly). I say this because looking at an actual map from the NRHP application for the Pomfret Street HD, I observe that it would require more than 100 coordinates to define its corners, while the application document also includes a UTM coordinate list of just 9 coordinates. (And I have observed similar relative difference in many other NRHP documents nation-wide.) Does your source has just 9 coordinates for Pomfret Street H D? That would establish that it is based on the UTM lists in the NRHP documents. The UTM list of 9 for Pomfret would provide a start for a map-maker but they are inadequate to make a good map, in my view. doncram (talk) 19:54, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Yes, the NRIS database lists only nine vertex points for the Pomfret Street district. I think this would still give you an outer bound though (i.e. the district would be smaller than the polygon formed by the coordinate list) so, in the absence of the actual map, it would still be useful for delineating the boundaries relative to the surrounding locale. But yes, we should be aware of this limitation when using the NRIS coordinates. --Polaron | Talk 20:04, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Another caveat is that many of the coordinate sets in that system are going to have been based off of old U.S. Geological Survey Quadrant maps, which place everything in Connecticut about 100 yards away from where Google satellite maps and any other current map system places the same latitude and longitude locations. There was a big "datum conversion" in 1985 which realigned all measures. This applies to all the point locations in the NRHP list-articles and in the NRHP infoboxes from the Elkman system, meaning you don't know whether they are 100 yards off or not. doncram (talk) 03:38, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Quinebaug Mill-Quebec Square Historic District

FYI, i am splitting this article out. It is wikipedia-notable. It is surprising, and a disservice to readers, to redirect to a town article of a completely different name. And for other reasons, as stated in other discussions here. By the way, note that two town/village articles claim that this district is located in them: Killingly, Connecticut and East Brooklyn, Connecticut. I don't think either has any adequate source to claim the historic district is located entirely within them or to otherwise describe its relationship. I don't particularly wish to clean up those town/village articles, myself.
For this one, can I suggest that if anyone objects, that we discuss it to some consensus here. Or it would also be acceptable to open an AfD on this article, which could result in a "Keep" or "Redirect" decision (although, for the latter, some work would need to be done to establish where it should redirect to! :) ). doncram (talk) 05:55, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
I agree with you here as "East Brooklyn" is a merely a statistical area that refers to the portion of Brooklyn that was part of Killingly. --Polaron | Talk 15:35, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
This separation looks very sensible. --Orlady (talk) 16:01, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Knock me over with a feather! We all agree on something!  :) Lvklock (talk) 16:24, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks several of you for helping to improve the article for readers. However, I just tagged it in 5 places for citation needed, which immediately detracts from readability. Why on earth not provide your references when you add material, while you are still involved in wikipedia, while you have the reference handy, etc.? Or, is this material which is believed to be factual but is from memory / general knowledge (in which case it should not be added, in my view)? Hopefully this can be resolved by providing references and removing the citation needed tags. Then indeed this would be a good example of having accomplished something positive here. doncram (talk) 20:10, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
I've placed the references I used in the Talk page. I usually put the citations after I've put in all that I currently have. If I fail to find anything more over the next few days, I will add all the citations in one go. --Polaron | Talk 20:19, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

West Hill Historic District

Branford Point Historic District

move-related worklist and similar issues June 2009

  • Hebrew Congregation of Woodmont, Milford, CT, was removed by Polaron from Fairfield County list in this edit. Why? Needs to be restored? I don't see to which other city or county list this might have been moved. doncram (talk) 21:06, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
    • Milford is in New Haven County and the entry was moved to the New Haven County list. --Polaron | Talk 21:31, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
  • J. Alden Weir Farm Historic District was removed by Polaron, was restored by Nyttend, was removed again by Polaron, was restored by me (without me being aware of previous removal and restoration. I had only just seen Polaron's removal of an NRHP-listed place from the list-article with comment "removing duplication". I checked that, and assessed it is not exactly the same as the National Historic Site listing, there are two listings although they point to the same article and no doubt do highly overlap. But in the list of listings, we need to keep all the listings! Or am i missing something? Polaron do you have some other information here? Also do we need to have a basic agreement that NRHP-listed places will be kept listed, and kept displayed at their NRHP names (with pipelinks or redirects to article names where needed)? doncram (talk) 21:06, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
    • These two are definitely the same site. The NHL one superseded the previous Ridgefield-only district and now includes the entire site. If the current agreement is to include duplicates as long as separate nominations were made for parts in different towns, then so be it. As long as we don't make two articles, the current state is fine if that is indeed the way it's currently done. --Polaron | Talk 21:31, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
      • I drafted a more informative response that was lost by my computer shutting down, so please forgive me for restating it tersely: you don't know they are the same. You have no sources. I also assume the two listings include the same core area, but that is different. In other NHS / NRHP cases, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.-related NRHP districts and NHS areas, where NRHP documents have been linked in (by me), as I recall it turns out the NHS area includes modern visitor center facilities that are not historic and not covered in previous NRHP listing of historic buildings.
      • Further, and this is after i notice you just reverted a different one of Nyttend's edits, which i just commented about in new section below. Why on earth are you overriding an informed other editor's contributions, instead of asking for clarification? That's what Talk pages are for. It is unreasonable for you to communicate by combative revert edits and cryptic edit summaries, leaving it for others (me for the recent time being) to follow you around and try to open communications. This is getting tedious. 23:26, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
        • As I said, just don't make two article talking about the same place and we're good. If the convention is to list each nomination including ones that supersede old ones, that's fine. --Polaron | Talk 01:17, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

(that's all that i see through Fairfield, for now)

Guesswork and edit warring

In yet another case, Polaron is making a guess and reverting another editor's contribution, and, in my view, engaging in a low grade edit war. Here, in this edit just now, Polaron just guesses that a comment in a description for a redlink property, that it is a property which extends into another county, is wrong, essentially saying "I doubt it" and deleting the listing. I reviewed that and decided there was basis to for me to undo Polaron's reversion, based on just that it was Polaron's self-described guess. I suggested in the edit summary that the information needs to be developed. I note it should best be developed by creating the article about the NRHP place, and building positive information that would build common understanding and consensus. I was going to comment at the Talk page perhaps or otherwise try to follow up with Polaron. But then in the edit history I see that the information about the county overlap was just recently put in by Nyttend, an experienced NRHP editor. Given Nyttend's judgement and apparently specific information, why on earth would an editor revert and remove the information, instead of inquiring for clarification somewhere? It just appears more and more to me that one editor, Polaron, is acting extremely over-confidently with imposing his own personal opinions, with no real information or sources. The behavior seems unacceptable to me. I don't know how to express this more politely, other than just to describe it as I see it. doncram (talk) 23:11, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Basic discussion about the need for sources with helpful support by Nyttend, amidst what i perceive to be continued low grade edit warring by Polaron, continued at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in New London County, Connecticut#Waldo House. The latest edit by Polaron, which I just now reverted a second time (now for a different explained reason), makes a specific assertion that is not supported by any source, and which appeared to be inadequate, possibly conjecture/fabrication of detail. With the first reversion, in the explanation I gave at the Talk page, I almost asked him the direct question of whether he now had the NRHP application form, but I dropped that from my comment before posting as I thought it could be perceived as not reflecting good faith. However in his latest edit summary he now asserts that he has the NRHP application for the property and it supports what he wrote. I presume he did consult or obtain the NRHP application and offhand I do have enough good faith to believe it does support his statement, but at this point and in general I think a source needs to be added, and I personally am not willing to accept Polaron's assertions without his at least composing the necessary footnote in the list-article (or to create the house article and supply the footnote there).
This seems like PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE OBNOXIOUS BEHAVIOR now, intended to goad me by adding something he could support, but chooses not to, so as to prove me wrong somehow if I assert the info in the edit is not true. I cannot continue to assume good faith with this. Polaron may be a nice person in real life, but the behavior is, in my view, obnoxious in the present context.
Polaron has shown repeatedly that he adds unsupported information to articles without sources, and sometimes that information turns out to be true and supportable (as it probably is in the last instance regarding waldo house, though he has yet to support it by adding the source), and in other cases it turns out to be false (as some of his previous assertions about the Waldo House, e.g. that it could not possibly extend into the other jurisdiction). It is altogether too easy for Polaron to make his edit warring changes with a few keystrokes and terse edit summaries. My attempting to explain/reason/discuss at Talk pages is time-consuming. This is indeed frustrating. doncram (talk) 22:56, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Random deletion of Marion HD from New Haven County list

It took me some effort to figure it out, but in this edit, with edit summary referring to a different change, Polaron randomly deleted Marion Historic District (Cheshire and Southington, Connecticut) from the New Haven County list. In later edits, he added the NRHP infobox for the district to an otherwise unsourced neighborhood article, in this version of Marion (Southington) from which i have now deleted it. The neighborhood article is vague about the definition of the neighborhood, but reading it you would have the impression that the HD is in the neighborhood (which seems to be false) and that the neighborhood was in Southington in Hartford County only (which may or may not be true). I am not sure that the neighborhood article is wrong now, but I am sure that it is better for development of the NRHP HD that it be covered in a separate article, and there is no reason to believe that it should not be listed in both county list-articles. I cannot fathom what Polaron is intending. doncram (talk) 10:06, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I just see that he is reverting my corrections / splitting of the Marion neighborhood article (apparently in Southington in one county previously, now argued to extend into Cheshire, in order to claim that it is the same as Marion HD. I'll stop again now. doncram (talk) 11:59, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
I didn't write the Marion article. The naighborhood boundaries are vague and the only boundary ever officially defined for the place known as Marion is the historic district. That neighborhood does extend into the northern edge of Cheshire but the "point location" used by map makers is within Southington. I do apologize for the inadvertent deletion in the New Haven list. --Polaron | Talk 13:16, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for apologizing. Will you restore its row to the New Haven list-article now, please? Also, your edits to revise the neighborhood article, apparently towards keeping the Marion HD covered only within it, are making new, unsubstantiated claims. It seems that because the HD extends into 2 towns and counties, you are now saying the neighborhood does. It could easily be the case that the HD is in more than one neighborhood, but Marion neighborhood is the biggest part and hence the Marion HD name. There is no source other than the NRIS source in the Marion article. It is an awful burden for an NRHP editor to face, in editing the HD article, to have to explain some vague relationship to a neighborhood that you yourself say is vague. An article with unsubstantiated claims about history that has no relevance, perhaps, to the HD. I think that a simple, completely sourced HD article must be allowed. There is no source to argue anything otherwise, like that it is the same as some undefined neighborhood. doncram (talk) 13:27, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
That part of Cheshire is somewhat isolated from Cheshire center because of mountains and is indeed part of the Marion neighborhood. I'll fix the New Haven County article later today. --Polaron | Talk 13:32, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Now Polaron has replaced my creation of a Marion HD article with a link to Marion (Southington). Marion HD is not in Southington! It is in Southington, in one county, and Cheshire, in another county. Hence I prefer the version I wrote, which was at Marion Historic District (Cheshire and Southington, Connecticut), but now somehow there is no edit history there, so I cannot even find the version I wrote. This is unacceptable, to be trying to, in effect, nominate something for consideration, yet to have it deleted away. Polaron, could you have the decency to record here, where is the version of Marion HD which i created, for reference? doncram (talk) 13:33, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
How about focusing first on creating quality content, then later discussing the ideal article title(s)? If I wanted to know something about the Marion historic district, I would learn far more from Marion (Southington) than I would from Marion Historic District (Cheshire and Southington, Connecticut), as those articles were constituted when I looked at them (Marion (Southington) article and HD article). However, both articles left a lot to be desired. The HD article said that the historic district exists, gave some rough information on where it is, and it classified the architecture of the buildings. (Basically, it was a prose version of the NRIS entry.) The other article had additional location information and provided some unsourced history of the community. If the purpose of these articles is to provide information, then they should be combined into a single article (which is the case as of the instant when I am typing these words, but might no longer be the case when I finish typing). There is no valid purpose served by having two separate and disconnected stub articles about one historic neighborhood. --Orlady (talk) 14:49, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
That's what I am trying to do at the moment. I have acquiesced to having the article name be at the historic district name and moved some information with source to the historic district article. I don't understand why Nyttend insists on separation. --Polaron | Talk 14:53, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Polaron, did you restore the Marion HD row and renumber the county list?
The current version of the article now at Marion HD (Cheshire and Southington, CT) now includes HD info followed by a section which I have relabelled as "Rochambeau's visit". This material sounds somewhat interesting but has little connection to the historic artifact of the buildings of the historic district (I do see a tavern is mentioned and there is an unsourced claim the building still exists, now as a private house). I am sure that getting the main valid, available source, the NRHP document would clarify. Note it is stated this is the 8th encampment, with no connection to anything else. It appears to me that a separate article about Rochambeau's French army encampments in CT should be created, and linked to from this and from other NRHP articles. Note there is a Rochambeau March Route and several encampment sites, including 4th, 5th, 47th, that are NRHP-listed. If/when a decent treatment of whatever that March is, is created, the HD article can be developed a bit more. It just seems the wrong place to develop perspective about that history, with no source really relating to the HD, which could be mostly/all related to Greek Revival or whatever architecture of a century later. So for now I believe it would be better to remove almost all that material. doncram (talk) 21:22, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I have readded Marion to the New Haven County list and renumbered it. You do have a point about the Rochambeau thing not being completely relevant. However, the Barnes Tavern mentioned is definitely in the district. It is in fact the Levi Frost House (separately listed on the NRHP). So there's definitely some relevance. --Polaron | Talk 01:41, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

  • I restored Marion, Connecticut (renamed from Marion (Southington) as a separate article. In addition to having an historic district, it has its own zip code (PO boxes only) and is the primary postal address for that zip code, so it clearly deserves to have an article. --Orlady (talk) 02:27, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
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