Fresh Perspective (student guest post)
- Meg Moughan
- May 17, 2024
- 3 min read
Board of Architectural Review Photographs Collection
by Ashlyn Pause
I recently completed an internship in the Records Management Division of the City of Charleston! On May 11, 2024, I received two undergraduate degrees from the College of Charleston in Historic Preservation & Community Planning and Classics and two minors in Urban Studies and Art History. This semester, my role as an intern has been digitizing and creating metadata for historical Charleston records that have never been available for digital access. I started the semester with the 1880-1930 City of Charleston Year Book Index, which is featured in a previous blog post. I worked alongside the Lowcountry Digital Library to learn how to properly scan archival documents and also create their corresponding metadata for publication. These skills were transferable to my second project, the Board of Architectural Review (BAR) Photographs Collection.
The BAR Photographs Collection is a compilation of photographs related to the Board of Architectural Review that were removed from BAR Vertical Files and transferred to Records Management at an unknown date. The collection is organized by address and street number and consists of various photographic mediums. I am the first intern to work on the digitization of this collection; therefore, a part of my role for this project was laying the groundwork for how this collection will hopefully evolve and one day be completed. This included the formation of formula sentences and language structure specifically related to file descriptions. This project will be completed by future interns who will use my work as a basis for their own. This is a continuously developing project because there are two and a half boxes filled with these never-before-seen photographs which will all eventually be released to the public.
But for now, I have completed the files on Bull, Colonial, Charlotte, Duncan, George, Spring, and Tradd streets. While working on this collection, I found property and address confirmation to be one of the more challenging aspects of creating the metadata. A majority of the files are named after their respective address and street number. Therefore, it was a goal of mine to confirm that the labeled addresses were correct before publication. In the case of absent addresses, it was my responsibility to locate the address of the corresponding property. The confirmation of addresses was oftentimes a struggle in the metadata process because of the evolution of Charleston’s urban topography since the photographs were taken. In some cases, addresses were not confirmed in the original files and resulted in vague names such as “Parking Lot” or “Field.” One of the ways I confirmed these addresses was through the use of Google Earth and walking through Charleston myself with copies of the files.
One thing I found interesting about the collection itself is the mystery tied to it. The photographic files often seem random with no clear pattern of use or purpose. There are files for major Charleston streets, such as Spring and Tradd, with only a handful of photographs in the files. Similarly, significant Charleston streets are not found in the collection, such as Wentworth Street. Then there are also large files for smaller streets, such as Bull Street and Charlotte Street. There are even some files covering properties beyond the peninsula itself, such as Folly Road. It is a unique collection with limited information on why or how it came to be. Despite the unknown with this project, it is exciting to be a part of the team that is digitizing these photographs for public consumption and research. With the increased accessibility of these photographs, those participating in property research and historical analysis of Charleston will be able to use this collection to better understand the historical urban topography of Charleston.
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