Beltline: A History of the Atlanta Beltline and its Associated Historic Resources

Prepared by the Spring 2006 Preservation Planning Class. This project, developed in a collaborative effort by the Atlanta Urban Design commission and GSU students, was designed to highlight the history of the proposed redevelopment nodes along the Beltline, which is an outer band railroad line encircling the city. The purpose was to identify the significance of the resources therein and their links to Atlanta’s history, providing assistance in the overall development process of the Beltline project.https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_heritagepreservation/1003/thumbnail.jp

Charming Charleston: Elite Construction of an Idealized History in Twentieth-Century Tourism

An innocuous tourist pamphlet? The hyperbolic claim of a self-important city? Or the relics of slavery-era paternalism and nostalgia in a twentieth century Southern city dominated by an elite class obsessed with heritage. The associations that leap from this pamphlet, published and widely distributed in the 1930s and 1940s advertising Charleston as a tourist destination for those seeking the aesthetic and historic, raise illuminating questions about the nature of tourism in Charleston. The artist could have chosen anybody to hold the door open to the incoming public, but he chose an elderly black gentleman, grasping the gate with a huge grin on his face, having taken his hat off, and with a slightly bowed posture. Inside the gate, the luscious gardens and blooming azaleas beckon, along with the steeples of the city’s churches in the distance. The image, in short, seems to invite a very specific audience into Charleston. This brochure markets Charleston tourism as packaged for tourists seeking to go back to olden times; they desired to view gardens, historic houses and landmarks, and in essence experience the Charleston of an antebellum planter, complete with a happily subservient and very visible black population

Exploring Accessibility versus Opportunity Crime Factors

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of accessibility (street networks) and opportunity factors (land usages) on property crime among street segments in Raleigh, North Carolina. The analytical model for this research is patterned after the Beavon, Brantingham, and Brantingham (1994) study (hereafter referred to as "the Beavon study") of property crimes among Vancouver, Canada street segments. This study expands the scope of the Beavon study by including a measure of guardianship and analyzing additional opportunity measures (accounts of 10 business types and 4 residential land usages)

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHANGES IN BUSINESS STRUCTURE AND TOURISM GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT IN CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, 1899-1999

The dissertation investigates how a medium-sized U.S. city (Charleston, SC) transformed itself from an old depressed port, with a predominance of manufacturing industries, to one that is a popular international tourist destination. The research seeks to answer the following questions: * What urban processes have been most influential in shaping the tourism product? * Can Butler\u27s Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model be used as a basis for measuring tourism growth in the Tourism Business District of a U.S. city? * Is the change in a city\u27s business structure related to the growth of the tourism industry? * What measures have to be taken by the public and private sectors to develop and maintain the tourist product in the Tourism Business District? * What other factors are important to the growth and success of a destination? The TALC model is examined by looking at the changes in business structure over a hundred year period from 1899-1999. \u27Snapshots\u27 are taken every twenty years using business data taken from city street directories. For tourism businesses (accommodations, restaurants, antique stores and gift shops), the snapshots are taken every five years to obtain a more accurate picture of growth and change. The analysis also includes graphs of tourist visitation rates and expenditures and maps of the central area of Charleston. An historical analysis helps to explain why some of the changes in Charleston\u27s business took place and how tourism became the leading industry in the area. Topics such as events, advertising, beautification, facility development and tourism management give a picture of the tourism development process in the community. The study concludes that while the city may go through cycles of business growth, change and decline, tourism is not always affected by those cycles. Exogenous factors like recessions, gas shortages and price rises, have far more impact on tourism. Butler\u27s model is suitable for a description of tourism development but there needs to be more focus on the process and evolution of tourism management and planning as tools for maintaining the urban tourism product and in a multifunctional city some better measures of estimating tourist numbers

Tucked Away: An Analysis of Charleston\u27s Courts and Alleys & the Search for Graceful Density

The gritty, authentic quality of the alleys, lanes, and work yards that channeled the day-to-day routines of Charleston\u27s working class and poor fascinated and inspired writers, poets, and artists during the decades that followed World War I. Charleston\u27s alleys, particularly those South of Broad, were often the subject of romantic celebration. A far more common secondary urban street form, the court, has, in contrast, received neither popular or scholarly attention. The courts of Charleston are short, narrow pedestrian streets that pierce the center of residential blocks, historically lined with small houses and tenements that housed the city\u27s labor force, recent immigrants, and African Americans. The houses, typically eight to ten, are turned gable end towards the street and are derivatives of the Charleston Single House and the Charleston Cottage forms. This tight residential pattern encouraged a sense of community and longevity unique to other urban environments. This study explores several urban processes, one of them the development of the interior of residential blocks and the appearance of the court in the post-bellum era, the morphology, demographic character, and significance of the form. The results indicate the alley and court appeared in two distinct waves. Both courts and alleys were planned forms within Charleston\u27s city walls. When the city responded to a post-bellum influx in population, the court flourished a second time because it could be quickly created and easily managed by a neighboring landlord. By collaborating with urban planners, commissions, and historic preservation organizations, Charleston can learn more about the role of alleys and courts, their decline, and advantages of using them to address contemporary urban planning issues

The Transition to Neotraditionalism: The Case of Huntersville, North Carolina

Troubled by the impacts associated with conventional development, the suburban community of Huntersville, North Carolina responded to metropolitan sprawl by adopting strict neotraditional development codes. Although a growing number of municipalities have begun to allow traditional neighborhood developments, few have completely reformed their zoning laws the way Huntersville did in the early 1990s. This thesis asked why Huntersville made the transition to neotraditionalism and what were the consequences of such a drastic step? A number of factors converged, including a rapid build-up of growth pressures and the timely arrival of new urbanist planning philosophies to spur Huntersville’s decision. Crucially, however, widespread support from the citizenry allowed the town government to ignore developer opposition and complete the transition. The town’s decision had a number of unforeseen consequences, including increased approval time for developments, increased economic segregation, and the appearance of “neotraditional hybrids,” that is, developments that only partly followed neotraditional principles. The town’s open space goals also came into conflict with is affordable housing and diversity goals. The town modified its codes once it realized that not every neotraditional planning principle had its intended effect or was conducive to the town’s development goals. Nonetheless, its tier-based zoning system, emphasis on pedestrian-oriented development, open space preservation, and encouragement of good architecture have identified Huntersville as a progressive community. The town offers a number of important lessons to other communities trying to manage growth

A Study of the Diffusion of Culture in a Relatively Isolated Mountain County

A study of Swain County, North Carolina from its creation in 1871 to 1927. The diffusion of culture is in the broadest senseas old as culture itself. But how does this diffusion take place? What is its relation to the mesne of communication. Does ideological culture change as rapidly as material culture, and if not, what are the resistance to it? What are some of the survivals of the old culture as it existedbefore the introduction of modern influences? These are some of the questions which determined the lines of investigation for the present study

Beaufort County above-ground historic resources survey Beaufort County, South Carolina

The objective of this survey has been to identify all above ground historic resources in the survey area of Beaufort County. These resources include a wide variety of cultural remains, including buildings, structures, sites, objects, districts, and landscapes that have architectural or historical significance. The project is designed to provide information to public officials throughout Beaufort County to allow them to make informed decisions regarding the impact of development and other public activities on Beaufort County’s cultural resources, and to set priorities for the protection and use of these resources

“All modern conveniences”: multi-family housing choice, the apartment, and the modernization of Raleigh, North Carolina, 1918-1929

This dissertation argues that city planners and boosters in 1920's Raleigh, North Carolina, advocated that she was to be a "residence city" based on single-family homes in exclusive suburbs for the white middle-class. However, both realtor-developers and private homeowners chipped away at the symbol of the "residence city." Raleigh was to be modern, but it was a modernity based not just on the rhetoric of city leaders who emphasized the single-family home. It was a modernity based on the actions and desires of realtor-developers who were anxious to exploit the new architectural form of the apartment house. It was also a modernity based on the decisions of individual, private, homeowners to incorporate non-family members into their households to earn additional income and contribute to their family's economic prosperity. Homeowners in some ways rejected the "residence city" because they rented out portions of their homes to non-family members. In other ways, they embraced the symbols of the white, affluent, suburb by insisting on architectural solutions, such as porches and private entrances, which emphasized the value of privacy and by complying with restrictive housing covenants which barred sale or rental of properties to African Americans in perpetuity. Realtor-developers also rejected the "residence city" because they chose to invest money in multi-family apartment houses in addition to single-family home developments like Boylan Heights, Cameron Park, Glenwood-Brooklyn, and Oakwood. The "residence city" was a philosophy put forth by city boosters in which the single-family home became the symbol of progress and refinement--a modern philosophy for a modern place. It was the way in which Raleigh business leaders expressed the concept of the "suburban ideal" locally. In the eyes of these city boosters, Raleigh would not be a city of transients and renters instead, it would become a bastion of southern success through an army of white, affluent, suburban homeowners. The "residence city" was newly constructed in the 1920s to help control the socio-economic composition of Raleigh's suburbs as they competed for land space with already established communities that did not conform to the vision of racially and economically sorted neighborhoods. The popularity of multi-family housing solutions in the form of boarding houses, apartments within single-family houses, and new apartment houses contradicted the vision of the "residence city" made up of single-family, suburban homes. This study contributes to the fields of urban history, suburban history, southern history, and architectural history because it examines Raleigh's transition from a town to a modern, southern city filled with new technologies and experimental housing forms. Most importantly, this dissertation contributes to the history of the New urban South and vernacular architecture history in terms of examining traditional multi-family housing patterns, the introduction of newer, more modern multi-family housing options, and to suburban history by using an analysis of housing records (including city directories, newspaper classifieds, historic property registration and nomination forms, and suburban promotional brochures) coupled with modern fieldwork photographs. The tension between how Raleigh boosters, realtor-developers, and residents in the early decades of the twentieth century defined the "residence city," in symbolic terms, and the actual practices of middle-class homeowners and realtor-developers alters our understanding of the history of the American suburb