ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the application of GIS mapping and 3D digital historical reconstruction to investigate geographies of bookstores in 19th-century New York City and, more broadly, emphasizes the value of spatial humanities methods for expanding research questions and insights into book history and print culture studies. The first intervention, “Mapping Manhattan’s Bookstores,” maps the scholarly geography of bookstores to highlight how issues of historical evidence have resulted in selective and incomplete critical narratives. Then, through mapping location data from 19th-century city directories, this chapter plots new evidence of and insights into retail bookselling in antebellum New York City. Pushing these insights further, the second intervention, “Her Store,” experiments with digitally reconstructing a women-owned bookstore on the northern edge of the developing city in 1860. As part of the research process, digital reconstruction raises important issues concerning evidence and data and the ways that we document spatial history. Both interventions demonstrate that diverse mapping methods can offer richer, more integrated understandings of the patterns, relationships, and contexts that animated 19th-century retail bookselling in New York City and historical spaces in general.
