Over the past week, we’ve decided to focus of our project on the impacts of flooding on the area surrounding the Bushkill Creek and the greater Easton area. On Thursday we plan on going to the Nurture Nature Center to try to gather as much information as we can about the history of flooding in the city and what sort of public education the Center currently provides. The Center, which was founded in 2007, offers various programs on environmental risks for the general public. We think this would be valuable to get an idea of what the public perception is about flooding and the risks that people may or may not be aware of when they live so close the water. After some further research on the Williams Arts Campus, which is in the 100 year – flood plain, we were able to find some the of the plans for the project. We want to look further into why the college would build in a flood plain if you know the risk and what precautions they take. We plan on reaching out to Prof. Mary Wilford-Hunt, the schools architect, for additional information.

In addition to this, we looked into what used to exist on these sites in the past and perhaps try to find out what happened to those place. We used what photos we were able to find online as well as the Sanborn Maps of Easton from around 100 years ago to investigate what used to be in this area. Specifically, we are interested in examining why there used to be two streams the flowed under the North 3rd street bridge. Attached are some of the photos and maps we found:

A map of the North 3rd Street area, circa 1919

Our goal is to compare flooding to development in the area. Does periodic flooding have anything to do with the redevelopment of the space? Is architecture in the area focused around flooding? What companies or buildings have occupied the space over time and how were they effected by flooding? Separately, when did Lafayette begin to take control of the space? Who used to live there and were they forced out by the college? These are just a few of the questions that we are looking forward to exploring throughout this project.