Your Neighborhood, 100 Years Ago

Have you ever wished that you could step back in time-- just for a moment-- to experience your neighborhood as it was long ago?

Photographs offer a glimpse, of course; but while photographs convey the look and feel of a place, they usually don't reveal the area's layout.  For example, if you lived in this spot 100 years ago, where would you shop?  What might you do in your spare time?  What sources of light and heat were available? Sanborn maps-- detailed city and town records maintained by the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company-- can help you to visualize a neighborhood at this level, as they show and label individual shops, residences, churches, and other community resources.

And now, these addictive maps are online!!  (When I first encountered Sanborn maps in grad school, one had to go to the city library and page through them, physically.  It was fun, but also a lot of trouble.)

For example, I'll link you to the following images at the University of Missouri:

... Old St. Patrick Oratory (Kansas City, MO) in 1896

Zoom in, and find surrounding hotels, offices, dwellings (coded "D"), shops ("S"), the public library, the YMCA, a laundry, a drugstore...

... St. Francis De Sales Oratory (St. Louis, MO) in 1909
You'll see nearby tenements, flats ("F"), movie theaters ("moving pictures"), pool rooms, saloons (abbreviated "sal"), a laundry, etc.


Kansas residents can find many of their maps here, at the University of Kansas Libraries.

Whatever your city/state, be sure-- if you're interested--to check the online resources of your public library!  Many county libraries have begun to offer digital access to their local maps... Keep in mind, too, that the Sanborn Company began these records in 1867 and updated them throughout the 20th century, so many different editions may be available to you.  If your local library offers only maps dating from 1920- 1930, for example, look at the holdings of your area academic library-- there could very well be more!

Wouldn't this research make an interesting homeschool project in History?!

PS:  Here's a helpful key to common Sanborn map abbreviations (University of Michigan).

To Henry Rago, poet and De Paul alumnus

"Laughter and books and wine are holy things; and living is good; and death is a breathlessness with the whole adventure of finding everywhere the traces of one great beauty..."

                ~Henry Rago, "Plea for Uncommon Sense," De Paulia (February 4, 1937) 2.


Dear Henry Rago,

I met you in 1936.  (You never met me.)  It was when you began that column for the De Paul University newspaper, and-- well, your words leapt out of that blurry microfilm image and gleamed. Just gleamed! I began to look forward to finding your column, again and again; I even fancied that I could discern your cadence in unsigned editorials. Later, in the files of Chicago Inter-Student Catholic Action, I found a short play that you'd written in 1940-- a clever anti-war skit that made me laugh out loud--as well as a few poems, all of which strengthened an impression I'd already received: that, if I'd been at De Paul in 1936-37, I'd have been, well, intrigued. 

But from a distance.  While you described yourself as "timid," you seemed popular and involved in everything-- from CISCA to newspaper to drama to Homecoming and intramural sports-- so no, I would never have braved the writerly crowd surrounding your booth at Pixley's or the Roma! And if I had, could I have joined your banter on the Mystical Body implications of a cheeseburger. . . ?

Researching a (21st-century) dissertation on collegiate Catholic Action, however, I took the liberty of citing your poems and newspaper columns as illustrations of a developing liturgical/social justice culture among Depression-era Catholic youth.  (I hope that you don't mind.)

Looking further, I'm thrilled to find that--no shock!-- you'd indeed become a renowned poet, theology professor, and editor of the well-known literary journal Poetry. Today you have your own web tribute, one much more fitting than any I could construct... since, after all, I only watched you from afar in your student days, at De Paul in 1936.

PS:  While I'd love to share a poem or two that I found in the files of CISCA, I'm concerned about copyright issues-- so instead I'll link to your wonderful "Sonnet for God," which Poetry published in 1934.