The Campus Chronicle

Volume 2, No. 26
May 24, 2002

The Virtual Historic Savannah Project uses a combination of traditional research and computer technology to allow Web site visitors to move through a 3-D model of the city and access information by clicking on individual models of buildings.

Virtual project scores real money

By Emily Thompson

The Virtual Historic Savannah Project, a collaborative project of the architectural history and computer art departments at the Savannah College of Art and Design, has been awarded a two-year, $150,000 Implementation Grant from the Preservation and Access Division of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency.

According to project director, Robin Williams, Ph.D., chair of the architectural history department, the grant is remarkable for an architectural history-based project, particularly one in the Southeast.

In order to document the evolution of the downtown historic district of Savannah since 1733, the Virtual Historic Savannah Project uses a combination of traditional research and computer technology. Visitors to the project’s interactive Web site, www.scad.edu/virtualsavannah, are able to move through a 3-D model of the city and access information by clicking on individual models of buildings. Eventually, visitors will be able to explore all of downtown Savannah in any year of its development and access information with the aid of a search engine.

This is the third major grant awarded to the project, which has been in development since 1997. In 2000, the project received a pair of planning grants: $50,200 from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Public Programs and $9,766 from the Georgia Humanities Council. The previous funding, along with continued support from SCAD, made the creation of a functioning online prototype possible. The prototype has served as a test site. A preliminary prototype demonstrating the use of 3-D computer models and different kinds of historical data and images is available at www.scad.edu/virtualsavannah. The prototype focuses on Jasper Ward, a 12-block area around Madison Square.

The $150,000 NEH Implementation Grant will be used for the expansion of the project content to the rest of the downtown historic district. The funding will principally support the hiring of students to conduct research and carry out data input on people, buildings, streets, squares and monuments. Funding will also support the involvement of consultants to help guide the project’s expansion and refinement.

According to Helen C. Agüera, senior program officer at the NEH, in her letter to Williams announcing the award, "Evaluators of the grant application were impressed by the wealth of material the project promises to make widely available in an engaging and vivid way. Especially appealing was the rich documentation in the censuses, insurance maps, photos, and architectural evidence." The evaluators "recommended support in view of their estimation of the significance of the data to be compiled and the project’s potential as a model for integrating diverse types of historical materials related to a city."

The grant evaluators were not the first to consider the Virtual Historic Savannah Project as a potential role model. In April 2001, previous NEH Chairman William Ferris, in his annual presentation to Congress, noted, "We view this project as a national model and hope to see similar initiatives in other cities around the nation."

The project team developing the Virtual Historic Savannah Project involves professors from three institutions in two countries, with Williams as overall project director as well as the supervisor of all architectural history research. Greg Johnson, a professor of computer art at SCAD, has been involved since the project’s inception, overseeing the technical development of the project in general and the creation of 3-D models of buildings, streets and squares. Leon Robichaud, coordinator of the history and multimedia program at the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada, serves as the principal consultant on the development and implementation of the project’s large database and Christopher Hendricks, associate professor of history at Armstrong Atlantic State University, assists with the gathering of social history information.

According to Williams, "Data will be gathered in multiple layers covering the downtown district and information will be uploaded for Web site visitors to view as soon as it is compiled." Williams and the NEH believe this project will be one of the most extensive and dynamic compilations of historical information on the evolution of a city and its occupants and it will be available to people all over the world by the end of the two-year grant period.

Thompson is the communications coordinator in the SCAD communications department.