#24 - Archipedia and Photo Fun

 This week we are going to talk about something fun! I figured we could all use a break from dry book reviews. 

I’ve mentioned it before, but the Society of Architectural Historians’ Archipedia project is a sort of Wikipedia for buildings. It organizes records for different buildings all over the United States and links things by location, date, style, and others. I helped to do some research for the Oregon state entries while I was in graduate school with one of my thesis advisors. Archipedia was an early stop for me when I first started to research the Ryves Holt House. They have a good basic entry for the building, pulled from W. Barsdale Maynard’s Buildings of Delaware with a couple photos of the RHH.

Several months later, when I had spread my research to cover the greater Lewes area, as well as Sussex County to trace the history of the RHH, I returned to Archipedia to look at entries for other Lewes buildings. I started to notice that nearly all of the other buildings in Lewes have very simple entries of a sentence or three, and often no photos at all. The entries were all taken from Maynard’s book, so they clearly hadn’t been updated since the original uploads onto Archipedia. I wondered at the time if I could possibly help create new entries, but was too busy to give it much thought. Then, my schedule cleared up a bit! And I found on Archipedia’s website that they are happy to accept photographs of their entries if they are lacking. So I spent a happy day driving around Lewes taking photos of old buildings, I was in nerdy heaven. I contacted Archipedia and they accepted my photos. They just recently went live online, and the best part?

You can do it, too! 

Archipedia gives some guidelines you should follow, basically if you take photos with a normal lens from a public space, you can take photos of any building. But read the guidelines before you wander off snapping pictures, especially if the buildings are privately owned.

What follows are a few photos I submitted. Enjoy! Cause next week we return to analyzing texts, this time though I get to talk to the author as well!

Captain Charles W. Johnston House,

currently Raas: Indian & Pan Asian restaurant (such good food!) built 1899

The Cannonball House (struck during the War of 1812) built before 1797.