The North Tonawanda Neighborhood Map project was sparked by my interest in local history. Maps from the 1800s show that North Tonawanda once covered only a fraction of the territory it covers today (The “Downtown” area below). Outside of North Tonawanda were villages with colorful names such as “Ironton,” “Gratwick,” and “Martinsville.” These names appeared in early newspaper accounts, and indeed are names still used  by some residents, and still extant in the names of some streets and institutions.

As I learned more about the origin of each neighborhood, I began to wonder about the other expanses of present-day North Tonawanda that are not so tidily defined in maps. What were there names? What names should they have? I made my best guesses, but I really wanted the map to reflect the community’s sense of itself. And so I turned to social media for help.

I posted my first draft of the map to Facebook on June 3, 2016. Feedback was immediate. It was clear that people were passionate about their city and its neighborhoods (one amusing instance was the gentleman who begged not to have his street defined as “Wurlitzer Park,” an area sometimes considered "snooty"). I took suggestions and came back with new maps, which were further refined. Very often, I had to weigh history against living memory. For instance, my choice of the historical name “Ironton”was roundly rejected in comment after comment. People knew the area as “The Avenues.” I gave in. 

“Martinsville” once stretched all along the creek, but that is not how anyone thinks of it today.  Not only did you tell me about the neighborhoods I knew about, but you told me about “Back of the Woods,” “Holiday Park,” “Park Village,” “Frogtown,” and a dozen other nooks and crannies I never would have guessed at. At the end of the day I couldn’t possibly fit them all in. But I thank everyone who took the time to help me make this little picture of our wonderfully varied and historic city.

However great the feedback from the community, and however soundly I had conducted my research, there were still plenty of ways for this map to go wrong. My original concept had always been for a charming thumbnail view of the city’s neighborhoods. I thought of it as an explorer’s map of a strange land: something with a touch of fantasy, as might appear as an insert in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. The idea of a dense, cartographically or ethnographically exacting work never seriously crossed my mind.

As a result, sub-neighborhoods were not depicted. A series of discrete real estate developments became simply “Mid-City.”  This solution worked almost too well, as there was now a lot of space to work with. I revived an early idea: to do a few simple sketches of iconic buildings or scenes within each neighborhood. This provided the lacking historical detail and suggested the neighborhood character I was looking for. In November 2016, after six months of work, the Neighborhood Map was finally complete.

Side Project: Individual Neighborhood Cards