The lawyer Nate Emeritz moved to Philadelphia a year ago. Interested in urban space and alive to the changing streetscape, Emeritz found himself camera in hand learning his way around the city. At the same time he began studying the city’s history. He put the two things together in a photomap based on William Penn’s 1687 plan for Philadelphia, surveyed by Thomas Holme. For just about each block of that early plan, Emeritz assigned a single contemporary photograph. The project, he wrote in an e-mail, “was intended to reflect the plan, execution, and tensions in the original city area.” The result is a kind of quilt of the written city–”two miles in length and one in breadth.” This week, Hidden City caught up with Emeritz for an interview.
(Interview at: 2013 Meets 1687 | Hidden City Philadelphia)
