The Records Management Division is the recipient of a 2024-2025 South Carolina State Historical Records Advisory Board (SC SHRAB) Historical Records Regrant Program award. Our project, Mapping Charleston, seeks to establish intellectual control over the City’s historical maps and plats collection (circa 1787-2004) and lay the groundwork to digitize the collection for public access. The City of Charleston has a vast collection of historical records, some of which are largely unstudied. This project seeks to identify, preserve, and increase citizen engagement with a piece of South Carolina’s historical records.
Mapping Charleston is the first phase of an anticipated two-part project to gain intellectual control of and ultimately grant digital access to the City’s archival municipal map and plat collection. In its current state, the Records Management Division is unable to publicly share the collection. The collection is indexed in an old card catalog system with no cross referencing. As a result, the collection is virtually unknown to City staff and public researchers.
Shown, left to right: the card catalog system, a view of the contents of a drawer, and index card data describing records in the collection.
The project will work with approximately 1,670 maps, plats, surveys, and architectural drawings that include street layouts, sewer lines, storm drains, sidewalks, property lines, railway tracks, wharves, and property plats. It also contains a small number of architectural drawings that pertain to municipal projects at City Hall, Dock Street Theatre, Market Hall, and the City Incinerator. The collection is significant in that it demonstrates Charleston’s land planning, property acquisition, and zoning decision for over 200 years of its history. Records depict many completed projects (i.e., early seawall improvements along the Battery), some that were planned but not executed (i.e., 1902 subway system), and others that evolved over time (i.e., Chicora Park into the Naval Base). Many of the maps show evidence of use in the field and contain notations from different generations of City engineers.
A slideshow featuring some of the records that will be publicly searchable by the end of the grant: 1) preliminary plan for Cannon Park, prepared by the landscape architecture firm of Olmsted, Olmsted, and Eliot, 1896; 2) hand drawn and colored map of Caper's Island and vicinity, 1887; 3) profile of a Queen Street sewer drain between Trapman and Rutledge streets, April, 1876; 4) blueprints for a proposed subway system for Charleston, 1902; 5) plan of a farm on Charleston Neck, a July 1843 copy of a February 1835 plan; 6) plat of Potter's Field at President, Congress, and Line streets, November 1868.
The purpose of the project is to expand and share knowledge of the collection thereby making it publicly searchable and accessible for the first time. The project will increase awareness of the collection and encourage engagement among residents and City departments alike. The process will improve responsiveness to FOIA requests and sharpen accuracy and efficiency of research requests. Additionally, collection accessibility is directly tied to the City’s Open Data Policy. We will also be able to reconnect maps to their source records; in many instances, maps were physically separated or removed from ordinances, reports, plans, and studies for purposes of proper housing. The disconnects were never noted, but as a result of the project, staff will be able to reconnect maps, surveys, plats, or drawings with their original sources.
The grant will enable us to hire a part time project archivist for the duration of the project from January through June 2025. Working with division staff, the project archivist will take the lead on the project. We will also host an undergraduate intern and a volunteer. We’ll be busy, and we are excited to share this journey with our blog readers!
For more information on the SC SHRAB Regrant Historical Records Regrant program and to see the full list of this cycle's recipients, please visit their site.
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