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I really liked your project. The lenses of civic virtue and labor were interesting and fitting ways to examine the construction of the capital building. I think you did a great job of integrating those themes throughout the project, but I think it would have been even more effective if you included more analysis of the labor, materials, and ideologies involved in the building’s construction. I don’t have any criticisms of the map, itself; it was great! Your symbology choices were good. The light gray background made sure that the blue markers for the points of interest were eye-catching, and the spatial relationship between the quarries and the building was evident even at a quick glance. There wasn’t any extra information to clutter the map and make it harder to tell what it was arguing.

You make a lot of mentions of the budget throughout the project. The numbers do a fine job of communicating how many resources were allocated to construction, but I think it would be cool if you had some sort of graph that showed how much money went to each thing. That would make it easy to compare and contrast the budget for the statues, the materials, and the construction.

Another thing I liked was the layout of the page. Having the first few paragraphs be linear and the rest of the text scroll on the side made your project visually interesting. I didn’t know you could combine structures like that. Lastly, I loved that you used an image for the cornerstone ceremony. I would have assumed it wasn’t that big a deal if not for the picture of the crowds. Showing how many people attended really drove home the magnitude of the event.

Ella’s story map looks over the history and development of St. Louis’ Forest Park and the significance of the 1904 World’s Fair held in Forest Park. I already knew a bit about the 1904 World’s Fair from Dr. Averett’s class on St. Louis but this piece revolving more around the history and layout of the park alone was incredibly interesting. The map shows a recreation of the original layout of the exhibits and stages of the 1904 World’s Fair that was themed around the hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase.

The story map does a great job of showing the reconstruction of the park and how it was transformed into the fairgrounds, as well as showing and explaining a lot of the main attractions of the fair. Along with detailed historical commentary, the visuals of the story map and the maps themselves were pleasing all following a red yellow, and cream theme. The entire presentation was easy on the idea and easy to read which was a massive plus.

I think it was smart how you waited to introduce the racial hierarchy theme of the fair to show that the fair was not some glittering festival, but something that attempted to glorify white, Western culture and paint other groups as primitive.

The one large thing I would toggle is the zoom of the map because without really interacting with the map the viewer wouldn’t be able to figure out what each building was. Once I zoomed in, again, I thought the map was amazing. I also think it would have helped if you did certain spotlights on buildings or exhibits to really magnify their role in the fair and maybe also add some personal accounts from fair goers to add to the uniqueness.

Overall I thought this was a really good project and I enjoyed learning about a city and an event that I tend to not think about.

Marie’s map focuses on the building of the Minnesota Capitol building, focusing on the construction of the second capitol building, after the first one burned down in 1881. Marie discusses the methods used to construct the capitol, the architects and contractors that built the capitol, and the controversies that have and continue to surround the capitol. Most recently on the statues named the virtues, of which two have gone missing and at least one has been destroyed. These modern controversies make the history of the building more notable to Minnesotan readers. The mapping project overall got across a complete history of the construction of the Minnesota capitol in a concise manner, as well as giving some maps to help understand the project overall. The first map seemed dis-conjoined from the narrative of the story map, although the second one feels well introduced. As far as the quality of the project, it was well done. I feel like some more Civil War history or analysis around the controversy of Georgian marble could have been further explored to a good effect. Introducing a map of battles where Georgia and Minnesotan troops fought may have been interesting as well. I think that more information on the marble in general would have been interesting, as I know that the quarries near St Cloud are now a park, you could have touched on the enrichment of the state overall by the construction of the capitol, although that does seem slightly out of the scope of the project. I would also say that it seemed like the maps were less essential to the project than I was expecting, although I did enjoy the use of mapped locations with specific information. The use of photographs within the map was creative and well used, I liked the side scroller that let you read while looking at new photographs. A feature like that makes a story map look professional. I looked through Marie’s references as well and it looked like there was a good amount of primary document work as well. Overall, Marie’s map was effective at educating on the construction of the Minnesota state capitol, while giving some insight into more modern history with the controversies of the virtues.

At this point in my project, i have added together data from 1970 to 1987. I have not added in the census from after 1970, but once I have, there will be comparisons between before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, reflected by the population changes between German states.

Here are scholarly sources for my project

1. Over-All Report (European War). United States Strategic Bombing Survey, 1945.
2. Kido, E. “Population Movements in Germany after the Collapse of the Third Reich.” Jstage, https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/kokusaiseiji1957/1988/89/1988_89_57/_article/-char/en.
3. Guianne, Timothy. “Population and the Economy in Germany, 1800-1990.” Yale University, 1998.
4. Mauri, A. (2019, April). East German Perspectives: The Berlin Wall and its Evolution as Cultural Heritage. Princeton University. https://tortoise.princeton.edu/2019/05/09/east-german-perspectives-the-berlin-wall-and-its-evolution-as-cultural-heritage/
5. Decressin , J. (1994, June 1). Internal migration in West Germany and implications for East-West salary convergence. Springer Link. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12319451/
6. Adebahr, H. (1969). Internal Migration and Regional Wage Levels. An Analysis of Internal Migrations in the Federal Republic of Germany 1957-1967. Journal of Contextual Economics, 89(5), 557–578.
7. Klüsener, S. (2014). The East-West Gradient in Spatial Population Development Within Germany. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 47(4), 167–179.\
8. Gnest, H. (2008). The development of supralocal spatial planning in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1975 to the present day. SSOAR. https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/
9. Goldstein, J. (2014, September). A geographic analysis of fertility decline in Prussia. JSTOR. https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2010-012.pdf
10. Global Census Archive. East View. (2024, April 10). https://www.eastview.com/resources/gca-pubs/

Here are sources for data/secondary resources

1. Cologne, Germany metro area population 1950-2024. MacroTrends. (n.d.). https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/204358/cologne/population
2. O’Neill, A. (2024, February 2). Population of east and West Germany 1950-2016. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1054199/population-of-east-and-west-germany/
3. Global Census Archive. East View. (2024a, April 10). https://www.eastview.com/resources/gca-pubs/
4. Population by nationality and sex. Federal Statistical Office. (2023a, June 20). https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Population/Current-Population/Tables/lrbev02a.html
5. BBC. (2019, November 5). Fall of berlin wall: How 1989 reshaped the modern world. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50013048
6. Breuer, R. (n.d.). Germany before and after reunification – DW – 10/03/2020. dw.com. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-before-and-after-reunification/g-55082387
7. The fall of the wall and German reunification. deutschland.de. (2018, September 27). https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/politics/germany-europe/the-fall-of-the-wall-and-german-reunification
8. Council on Foreign Relations. (n.d.). After the Berlin Wall: Europe’s struggle to overcome its divisions. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/article/after-berlin-wall-europes-struggle-overcome-its-divisions
9. Gramlich, J. (2019, October 18). How the attitudes of West and East Germans compare, 30 years after fall of Berlin Wall. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/10/18/how-the-attitudes-of-west-and-east-germans-compare-30-years-after-fall-of-berlin-wall/
10. Chapple, A. (2020, July 18). Berlin: After the war, before the wall. RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. https://www.rferl.org/a/berlin-a-city-of-rubble-after-the-war-and-before-the-wall/30733579.html

Heat maps can be an excellent way to understand concentrations in given areas. The military could also use heat maps. Understanding where fighting is concentrated could alter the course of a mission or how resources are spent. Knowing that something is going on versus seeing where it is happening are two different ways of combating a problem. Heatmaps allow readers to understand more than surface-level activity and information on a map.

For this project, I do not think there is much new information to be uncovered by comparing the map of Missouri from the 1960s to the map used for Google Earth today. Some things that are interesting to compare are the changes in infrastructure in the form of highways and roads compared to how they were nearly 60 years ago. The interconnectedness of cities, both big and small, is on display when comparing these two maps. It is also interesting to see some new cities pop up on the more recent map. And to see some cities from the 1960s not being named anymore or being completely absorbed by larger cities or even changing counties.            

The weakness in this approach to mapping changes historically is that a fair amount of information is missed. Just looking at the overlayed map makes for a game of “Where’s Waldo?”. Not all changes are directly explained, leading to a loss of information for the reader and them not understanding the actual changes that have taken place over the course of 60 years. A way to make this approach better would be to make the map more interactive and display all major changes in each county as the reader hovered over it. That way, changes are more evident, and information is not lost needlessly.