Digital Doors Open: Going to the Market

For my Digital Landscaping/ Doors Open project I have chosen to focus on London Ontario’s Covent Garden Market. From its creation in 1835 to the present day, the market has been an important feature of downtown London. It has developed from being a main site of commerce to a place of culture and a reflection of local heritage. Over the 179 years of its existence, Covent Garden Market has changed in a variety of ways. This project is aimed at tracking how this site has evolved while also exploring its historical significance.

A Brief History of the Market

Named after the Covent Garden Market of London, England the first marketplace of London, Ontario was situated within the courthouse grounds. In 1835 the Crown issued a patent which granted the municipality of London the right to hold a “Public Fair or Mart”. Generous shop owners and businessmen donated the back sections of their properties to use as a market center. This “Market Square” was bound by King, Dundas, Richmond and Talbot Street and remains on this site to the present day. On November 1, 1845 a small market house was built with money collected by local donations.

Market Square, 1875
http://www.coventmarket.com/history/

In March of 1853 the London Council purchased more land in order to expand the market and to erect a new City Hall on Richmond Street which backed onto the Market Square. The new market, designed by city architect Samuel Peters, was a storey-and-a-half, yellow brick building. The new market was topped by a cupola with a bell tower. This bell tower was later lost sometime before 1923.

Paul Peel's Painting of Covent Garden Market in 1883,
http://www.coventmarket.com/history/

In the mid-twentieth century the growing popularity of automobiles resulted in difficulty with parking in downtown London. In 1953 the citizens of London voted to have a private corporation construct a new market and a parking building. The new building was gradually built and completed in 1956 and the old structure was demolished. It only took a few more years for the parking to expand and in 1958 two more levels were added to the parking building.

Aerial view of Covent Garden Market 1953,
http://www.coventmarket.com/history/

On October 21, 1999 a new market was erected in the place of the old market and the parking facilities which had become obsolete. It had half the parking space as before and was designed by London architect Russ Scorgie with Paul Peel’s paining of the 1853 market clearly in mind.

The Process

For my project I am planning on using a variety of digital tools to highlight how the Market has changed over time. I will use Google Earth and SketchUp to create a 3D historical representation of the Market Square site. Materials such as historical photographs, aerial photographs and fire insurance plans will help me to complete this digital reconstruction. I want to use these images to create an overlay of images that will visualize the changes to the site.

I will also make use of the application TimelineJS to create a multimedia timeline of how the site has changed over the past 179 years. This will include primary source materials such as photographs and eye-witness descriptions of the market. This timeline will be used to help tell the story of the market and how Londoners felt about it. It will work alongside the visual recreation to give the audience an in-depth understanding of how the site has changed and its cultural significance to London, Ontario.

I am hoping to use this digital recreation and the timeline of Covent Garden Market in a larger project. For our second Digital History Project we will be tasked with creating a web site. For now, my current plan is to create a website that does a historical walking tour of downtown London. Due to my Research Assistantship at Eldon House I am planning on having this online tour reflect areas around London that the Harris family would have regularly visited. Covent Garden Market’s reconstruction would therefore be a key component to this walking tour. 

Works Cited

Covent Garden History http://www.coventmarket.com/history/

McColl Lindsay, Ann. “Going to the Market: Grocers, Hawkers and Wholesalers”. Downtown London: Layers of Time. Ed. Michael Baker (London: City of London), 2000.

Reading Between the Lines: A Discussion on Digitization

Over the past few years, the popularity of digital books has greatly increased. Who has not at one point read all or part of a book on a tablet or e-reader? As a history student I have relied on Google Books multiple times during my undergraduate career. According to the graph below, the ownership of E-readers in the U.S. has jumped from 4% in May of 2010 to 24% in September of 2013. With books being increasingly consumed in digital format it is important to examine how digital tools and resources alter how we approach books.

Graph provided by Pew Research

In her article, "Where Material Book Culture Meets Digital Humanities", Sarah Werner examines how the use of digital tools and the digitization of old manuscripts has the potential for new historical interpretation.

One of the most obvious benefits of digitizing a text is remote access. As Werner puts it in her article "if I can sit in my study outside of Washington D.C. and study Erasmus's 1516 translation of the New Testament by looking at a copy currently held in Basel, that's a win". No longer are historians required to make long, and sometimes expensive, trips to visit a library/archive that houses a manuscript that they wish to read. While digitization does allow for greater access, Werner also points out that digital tools can contribute to new interpretations of these artifacts beyond what is written within them.

A densitometer is a tool that is used to measure the levels of dirt on manuscript pages. This has a range of potentials, such as revealing which pages received more use than others. Werner also notes that modern digitization has improved with time, pointing out that the EEBO (Early English Books Online) had created digital facsimiles of not the early books themselves but from microfilm copies of the books. This created unclear digital copies, whereas new digitizing methods provide clearer digital facsimiles.

Opening from a 1557 Primer, as in EBBO.
Image taken from "Where Material Book Culture Meets Digital Humanities"

Same Opening as above, but in a High-Resolution Image from the Folger.
Image taken from "Where Material Book Culture Meets Digital Humanities"

I believe that Werner's article provides great insight into the potentials of digital tools to create better interpretations of these old manuscripts. With that said, I believe that it is also important to preserve the original, physical copies.

In the article, "Why Preserve Books? The New Physical Archive of the Internet Archive"   author Brewster Kahle stresses the importance of keeping the original texts. He states that "a reason to preserve the physical book that has been digitized is that it is the authentic and original version that can be used as a reference in the future [...] if there is ever a controversy about the digital version, the original can be examined". I think Kahle indirectly brings up an important concern regarding digitization which is the possibility of a digital text being doctored either intentionally or unintentionally.

For example, if a historian was digitizing a collection of maps by running them through a scanner it is possible that sections of the map may get cut off and therefore exempt from the digital copy. It is also possible that these maps include markings or text on the back of the document. If the individual scanning them does not recognize these markings or deems them of little significance, they may also be left out of the digital copy. It is therefore important to ensure that the original manuscript is preserved.

After reading both Kahle and Werner's articles I can see both the great potential and the great risks of digitization. Most of these risks though, I believe, can be negated by ensuring that the original copies remain well preserved and accessible. While digitization has the upside of accessibility and the potential to reveal new information, the original copies retain authenticity and accuracy.