Signatures of Commerce in Small-Town Hotel Guest Registers

2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Fyfe ◽  
Deryck W. Holdsworth
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Information System ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Urban System ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Travel Patterns ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Gis Software ◽  
Main Streets

Guest registers for six commercial hotels are analyzed to reveal everyday, nonmigratory travel patterns associated with small towns and villages in the upper Susquehanna valleys of New York and Pennsylvania at the turn of the twentieth century. The residences of guests are mapped using geographic information system (GIS) software and reveal two broad patterns of connectivity, a translocal cluster of visitors from places within the immediate vicinity and a set of visitors from more distant places up the urban system. Census and directory data identify many repeat visitors, such as hucksters and peddlers extending the reach of rural stores and merchants traveling circuits as agents of metropolitan manufacturing centers. In addition to commercial travelers, the presence of traveling entertainments, such as vaudeville acts and circuses, in hotel guest registers reveals shifts in American popular culture and entertainments on small-town Main Streets. These registers offer a fixed window onto a mobile world, and the signatures hint at the types of connections between these settlements and the outside world.

Philomath Couplet

2005 ◽  
Vol 1931 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-57
Author(s):  
Marcy Schwartz ◽  
John Willis ◽  
Bruce Erickson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Process ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Evaluation Criteria ◽  
The United States ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Cost Constraints ◽  
Main Streets

Values associated with statewide freight and tourist mobility; traffic, pedestrian, and bicycle safety; and small-town livability create competing objectives that are difficult to balance when main streets of small towns are also state highways. Many communities opt for bypass solutions to these issues, but the Philomath Couplet Project represents a main street solution that is sensitive to both the demands of the state highway system and the character of the local community. The controversial 10-month decision process culminated in the selection of a preferred alternative. Final design is under way, and construction is scheduled for 2006. Although many projects are developed according to context-sensitive solution principles, the Philomath Couplet Project represents a class of projects with characteristics likely to be faced throughout the United States in relation to the management of state highways that are also main streets of small towns. The difficulties encountered in conducting this project provide important insights to guide context-sensitive solutions implementation in these circumstances. The lessons learned shared in this paper highlight the need to manage the “end game” of small-town politics, the value of time and cost constraints, the need for a structured decision process, and the usefulness of evaluation criteria based on interactions of land use and transportation.

The Fascinating Moment of Godspell

2019 ◽  
pp. 227-249
Author(s):  
Paul R. Laird
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
York City ◽  
Religious Revival ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Film Version ◽  
Direct Competition ◽  
The Town

This chapter delves into contextual issues on the film version of Godspell, focusing on a small religious revival in American popular culture in the early 1970s. Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, and Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell appeared on stage within months of one another, and Christianity appeared in other aspects of popular culture at the time, including an image of Jesus on the front of Time magazine in 1971. The producers of Godspell, however, realized that the musical was quickly at the height of its cultural moment and they decided to release it as a movie while the stage production was still in its original run in various cities, thus providing a direct competition between stage and screen versions (normally film adaptations are released after the closing of stage versions). Changes were made to the material for the film version and, like On the Town and Bells Are Ringing, there were challenges related to the location filming in New York City. Reactions to the film were polarized, but it remains an important document of a time when Jesus made more than just a cameo appearance in popular culture.

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