Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Chester County, Pennsylvania

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Chester County NRHP[edit]

Copied from here:

With 308 listings, the Chester County list is clearly a split candidate; it's been too big for a long time, but now with Smallbones adding lots of pictures, loading the page is becoming a very very long task. Can you imagine any good way to split it? I've never been to the area, so I'm not aware if there are any good ways to split the county geographically. Nyttend (talk) 00:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I too would like to see the page split, just for ease of editing. However, defining a split (simple enough, though arbitrary), and actually splitting the page are two different things. I wouldn't know how to do the actual split without a ton of work.

File:Map of Chester County Pennsylvania With Municipal and Township Labels.png One arbitrary split into southern and northern CC would include the following townships and all townships south of them: West Fallowfield, Highland, East Fallowfield, West Bradford, East Bradford, and Westtown. There are 20+ townships in the southern part and about 25 in the northern part, but I'd guess the southern part would have at least 40% of the NRHP sites. The south is also culturally different - rural and, if possible, more Quaker. Smallbones (talk) 02:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure this has come up before. Personally, I'd loosely follow the railroad tracks, roughly the line between Coatesville and South Coatesville. Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 03:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - I was trying to find that and could not. I am not very familiar with Chester County, so a north south split seems fine, but I am not sure of the exact dividing line. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

PS As for splitting it, I think I would copy the existing article to two sandboxes, then just remove the entries that did not belong in each. Still a lot of work. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try as above - no guarantee that I'll finish it! Smallbones (talk) 03:35, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I remember bringing this up before, but we never did anything about it...Just one question — would a three-way or four-way split be a bad idea? Is there any good north-south dividing line? Would it be possible to use the Brandywine River as a dividing line? I can't find your railroad line either on Google Maps or on my Pennsylvania Atlas and Gazetteer, so I'm slightly confused as to what you mean. I'm well aware of the difficulty; I split the city of Miami out of National Register of Historic Places listings in Miami-Dade County, Florida just this evening. Nyttend (talk) 03:44, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Which Brandywine, East or West? It splits in Chester County. The railroad I'm thinking of is the modern Amtrak line and (as you near Philadelphia) the SEPTA R5. Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 04:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The railroad (Pennsylvania Main Line, Amtrak) follows W to E Parkesburg, Coatsville, Downingtown (so far matches my division) but then splits townships going to Paoli. 3 or 4 divisions? Maybe if the northern part is too big split the northeast off including West Chester (big), and the Goshens, Valley Forge aka Treddyffin (not so big as you'd think) up to Phoenixville and might have to include Westtown too since it's easy to mix up with West Chester. Maybe 40%, 40%, 20%.

But I've done my first pass on eliminating the South from the Northern list see:User:Smallbones/NorthCC and later I'll get to User:Smallbones/SouthCC

Smallbones (talk) 04:24, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

North looks ok with 187 (not numbered yet) - that would make 121 in the south (61%, 39%). If I moved West Chester and the Goshens it would be 166, 142 or 54%, 46%. Are those still too big? Smallbones (talk) 04:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On the North - one entry was missing coords and my number (189) doesn't match with Bing's 188. recheck and the South in the AM. Smallbones (talk) 05:29, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, I seem to have asked more than one question above :-) My atlas shows a stream that I thought to be the only branch of the Brandywine (going generally southeast through the county), and as I couldn't see names for any tributaries (except a few that clearly had different names) I thought that there was only one Brandywine...as I said, I've never been to the area. I'll have to see if I can find a map showing the Pennsylvania Main Line. Nyttend (talk) 06:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The PennDOT county maps show creeks and railroads - see here. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:54, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's a heck of a good map. (where can I find other PennDOT maps?) Division into north and south seems to check out (numbers of sites and landmarks) (189 sites N, 119 S). North could be subdivided further (call the divisions East and Northwest) probably about 90 sites in each. Culturally it makes sense East (suburban-rural), North ("railroad rural"), and south (rural-rural). East townships could be the Whitelands, the Goshens, West Chester, Willistown, Malvern, Easttown, and Tredyffin. Charlestown, Schuylkil, Phoenixville (from the North), and Westtown and Thornbury (2 sites now in the South) could be included or excluded to get a very even division. Let me know if I should let well enough alone. And please do check User:Smallbones/NorthCC and User:Smallbones/SouthCC for mistakes. Smallbones (talk) 17:15, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have links to all the PennDOT maps (they also have historic versions of these online) at User:Ruhrfisch/Resources. The direct link for the directory page is here. The east and northwest split sounds fine to me. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:50, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help with the splitting process! The Chester County list page is now a directory, similar to National Register of Historic Places listings in Pennsylvania and National Register of Historic Places listings in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And thanks for letting us discuss it here, rather than making us move to an article talk page :-) Nyttend (talk) 03:12, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Map[edit]

Here is a map for defining these better. I would make it easier to get to the overall directory page and to each of the other two pages from the top of each page. So Northern would have a link to the overall county page and to Eastern and Southern. Also noticed that the state page needs to be updated now. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:50, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Which communities are where?[edit]

Can someone familiar with the areas that make up each region please make sure the communities in each list are enumerated somewhere? (Either in this list, or in the region lists, or both.) Makes finding listings for a specific community easier... Magic♪piano 18:09, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I might have misunderstood your request at the List of RHPs in Chester County, PA, but I think there are a couple of ways to get what you want already on the page.

1 - you can just click on the link to the town in the table
2 - you can go down to the bottom of each list and get the Template:Chester County, Pennsylvania which lists each town, borough, township, etc.

If I have misunderstood, please do let me know of a way to present the info you seek that will work into the format. Smallbones (talk) 19:59, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You misunderstand. How do I find out which of the three regional NRHP lists contains the listings for (say) Malvern, Pennsylvania? Right now the only way to do so is to examine each regional list to see which one contains those listings, and is no help in telling which communities have no listings. A simple list of which communities are in each region would suffice. Magic♪piano 02:19, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Check out the two maps above. Click on the bottom one for detail. The East section goes from Phonexville to Exton to West Chester (and points east)

The division between north and south is essentially the PRR Mainline which follows the cities in the center (w to east) Parkesville, Coatesville, Downingtown, to near Exton. Reading the 2nd map will be easiest, once you undertand the dividing lines. Smallbones (talk) 04:33, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I understand the geographic description of the boundaries between the regions just fine. In the absence of detailed knowledge of local geography (as provided by the second map), it doesn't tell me where relative to those bounds any community is. As this article currently stands, in order to determine which region a community is in, I have to (1) look at the first map, and remember its visual bounds, (2) go to Chester County, Pennsylvania article, where the second map is (this step is psychic if I don't already know, or suspect, that map exists), (3) magnify it, because it is illegible in thumbnail, (4) locate the place by name on that map, and (5) hope that I recall the boundaries correctly while I'm looking at it.

Does this strike you as a user-friendly usage paradigm? It doesn't to me. A merger of the content of the two maps would certainly be useful (or at a bare minimum also placing the second map here as well). Just having a section for each region with a bulleted list of communities can't be that hard to do, given that there are less than 100 communities. (They might even be placed side-by-side using {{col-begin}}, or have a vertical image gallery run beside.) Magic♪piano 12:40, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]