What does your GPS say?

As I went about building a figure-ground plan for Shepherdstown, I reviewed three mapping websites: Google Maps, Mapquest and Bing Maps. I am a heavy Google Maps user and thought this would be my primary source for tracing building footprints but the Mapquest aerial images are more recent, including the new St. Agnes, also missing from Bing.

An interesting artifact in that research: when searching for “Shepherdstown, WV” (this does not work when including “25443″) the pin point is located at the corner of Princess Street and German Street. (Bing puts the pin point to the west, about half-way up the block to the library.) I’ve written previously about this corner.

Most residents and visitors would likely identify the intersection of King and German as the heart of Shepherdstown. And the Four-Way Stop should likely be the modern way-finding point for an automobile-centric navigation. Duke Street has grown well beyond its historical role. Having at one time connecting with Shepherd Grade alone, when the Potomac River crossing was at the foot of Princess Street, it remained a minor route until the connection of Princess Street to the Rumsey Bridge was no more.

First look: the Shepherdstown figure-ground

After the aforementioned Nolli map of Rome, a very rough figure-ground map of Shepherdstown.

This map

I love maps. This one in particular.

USGS maps provide an interesting look at the land, in particular the manner of notation for structures. Unless the structure is notably large, it’s just a dot.

Yet, the dot speaks volumes. Sometimes a map simply shows the presence of a thing, not it’s scale. These dots do this. Their density is what matters here — not scale, not style (they could be round or square, it would not matter) — it is the simple presence and spacing which makes for interesting reading.

This is near to what Shepherdstown was for over 100 years: a tight core of dots in a wide range of widely spaced dots. It is a commercial center in a rural landscape.

We can not return to that paradigm. But we can learn from it. What many people like about Shepherdstown — their reference when they speak of character — is the tight grouping of dots. While many people live (and perhaps love living) in a suburban landscape (seen in an early example here at Mechlenberg Heights) I am aware of no one ever talking about capturing or extending the character of the suburb to the same degree as is wished for the character of the center of Shepherdstown.

How clear can this be then that it is not the architecture which rules the day, it’s just dots. You, they…we love the dots.

Parcel 43, map J10_1

Cryptic title, I know. Just an aside…

I was looking at Jefferson County tax maps (now available online from the county) when an oddity at the corner of North Princess Street and the former Rocky Street jumped out at me. A 1.32 acre parcel cuts across the Shepherd campus as if it was once a connector from Princess Street to…what we now know as Rt. 480 and the Rumsey Bridge.

Fascinating stuff. Looking further, this time at the USGS map of Shepherdstown, one can see how the town can be abstracted to a nine-square grid, with four connectors to the rural landscape beyond:

1. Duke Street extends north to Shepherd Grade Road (staying on the West Virginia bank of the Potomac).
2. Duke Street extends south-west to Kearneysville.
3. Princess Street extends south toward Charles Town.
4. Princess Street extends north to cross the Potomac.

I’ve left out five and six, involving German Street. Blame the gestalt of the USGS map when considering this synthetic analysis — German Street represents a main route through town, of course but its connection to the east (down to the river) is easily imagined as a mere service road.