Draft:CultureNOW

See: cultureNOW MuseumWithoutWalls

cultureNOW dedicates itself to celebrating our vast cultural environment as a gallery that exists beyond museum walls through cultural tourism and arts education. cultureNOW believes that the three facets to understanding the world around us are art, architecture and history. Mapping these empowers the public to better visualize the place they live in making it a powerful tool to understand the richness and diversity of a community.

History
For the past twenty three years we have been on a journey acting as archeologists and planners, technologists and visionaries, librarians and poets to develop a holistic understanding of place. It is a trip that began on September 12th, 2001 with one printed map that tried to dissect a single shattered neighborhood to give it a structure to redefine itself and reboot. From that we began looking at other communities through the vehicle of cultural mapping and have expanded both geographically and technologically in a quest to demystify place. It has been a digital odyssey from Lower Manhattan to Google Earth which we have documented by produced printed maps, exhibitions, tours, programs and publications.

Lower Manhattan THEN and NOW Map
Lower Manhattan has effectively been America’s town square since its discovery in 1524. Virtually every major event of local, national and global significance has played out in some way on this stage. Some have been forgotten and some have been transformative in our culture and many have fallen between. This is both a project in urban archeology and a way of describing the city over time in a printed map. The map captures the multiple and overlapping stories that are woven throughout our city’s life in a single document. It embraces America’s history as the museums, monuments and memorials that dot its streetscape do. It highlights many of the concerns, events and places that the people who lived, fought, worked and visited here thought were important at their moment in time. It takes another look at the issues that they were preoccupied with and how they solved them:  their politics, religion, social protest, health and safety, commerce, disasters and defense, scandals and crime, education, publications, art and culture, parades and celebrations, architecture and engineering. It encapsulates the events that shaped the physical and cultural landscape within the changing geography at the water’s edge. And it raises questions that need to be considered as we plan a more resilient city in our future.

Lower Manhattan Then
Superimposes the historical maps that mark different periods with a snapshot of the city as it looked at each era:


 * 1800 using the Ratzer 1767 map (cut off at Chambers Street which was the northern boundary of the city at the time.),
 * 1860 using Harrison’s 1852 map which was the first to show the buildings and streets (below Canal Street),
 * 1900 (using the current GIS) showing how dense the blocks become,
 * 1867 Viele’s topographical map,
 * 2016 GIS Map

These maps are heavily photoshopped to accommodate surveying discrepancies to make the streets align. Shown also are infrastructure: ferries, horse carriage routes, elevated trains. Future infrastructure of significance such as the bridges are dotted in.

The events are depicted with the year cross referenced to the timeline as are places of significance and some memorials. The historic maps are shown at the same scale on the right panel

Lower Manhattan NOW
Describes the city as it looks today and might look in the future


 * 2012 Superstorm Sandy’s storm surge
 * 2050 projected National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projected flood zone showing 31“ of sea level rise
 * 1609 Shoreline

The historic timeline continues from 1900 to 2016. Overlaid on this map is the infrastructure from the turn of the century on showing, current ferries, subways, pneumatic tubes. Also shown are cultural institutions, some buildings of note and memorials, plaques, and artwork inspired by the history of the area.