The main gates and Allen Street running through the University Park campus circa 1924. Today, an iron gate and sidewalks replace the original street running through campus.
Overview
The State College community and The Pennsylvania State University’s University Park campus have changed substantially since their founding in the 1850s. The university, originally called the Farmer’s High School of Pennsylvania was established in 1855. By 1875 the university changed its name to the Pennsylvania State College and the adjoining community became known as State College, incorporating in 1896. The Donald W. Hamer Maps Library owns a collection of historical Sanborns ™ fire insurance maps that provide four snapshots in time of State College and Penn State in 1906, 1911, 1922, and 1929 . These fire insurance maps were used to provide risk assessments for insurance companies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, these early Sanborn maps are used in genealogy, historical research, and many other applications.
The State College Change Through Time project took the initial steps of georeferencing and mosaicing the scanned maps. Information about the 4,000 buildings was extracted by hand using ArcGIS Desktop. Historical photographs from Penn State’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library were linked to individual buildings for each time-period where available to give context to the map and to also make these resources geographically discoverable. Advertisements for local businesses were harvested from historical publications and linked to the buildings that businesses once occupied. When brought together in this map series, these resources paint an interactive and vivid picture of what campus and town were like, and the dynamic growth that Penn State and State College experienced during the early part of the 20th Century. These maps also provide data about campus and town in geographic context that can be repurposed for other research goals.
If you are associated with Penn State, for assistance in using these data in your research please make an appointment for a research consultation.
Results
Interactive ArcGIS Online maps showing georeferenced maps and building change through time
Interactive ArcGIS Online maps showing land use change through time
Interactive ArcGIS Online maps with searchable building addresses and land uses
Search Penn State’s Sanborn Map Collection
Sanborn Maps bibliography and reference list
People
Alia Horvath, Kiersten Hudson, Connor Henderson, Jack Swab, Tara LaLonde, Heather Ross, Nathan Piekielek, Albert Rozo
Presentations
Ross, Horvath et al. (2016). Pennsylvania GIS Conference.
Acknowledgements
Support for this project has been provided by the Penn State University Libraries Bednar Internship Program.