Springfield Initiative
Undertaken by Clarence Thomas Center for Historic Preservation at the Savannah College of Art and Design in the fall of 2011 in cooperation with the city of Springfield, the goal of this project is to document the cultural resources of the city of Springfield to determine further steps of the city government’s decision to designate the city’s residential historic district. More than 30 HIPR students and volunteers from other SCAD programs have been involved in the recording and documentation processes including the creation of a historic resource inventory based on the identified contributing historic monuments and vernacular homes, observations about the overall cultural landscape, and digitization of these survey outcomes. After completing the inventory process, Springfield’s significant monuments and 56 residential homes in the potential historic quarter were successfully digitized by utilizing Autodesk Revit and Google SketchUp modeling programs, and are currently associated with Google Earth. To support the city’s designation efforts, as finalizing steps, HIPR 703 (Preservation Law and Advocacy) is developing some applicable historic district ordinance for historic quarter in the city, and HIPR 721 (Preservation Planning in the Built Environment) will suggest design guidelines based on the proposed preservation ordinance. All of these analyses will contribute to the designation of the city of Springfield’s potential historic district.
