Charles H Wade

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I am a cultural-historical and anthropological geographer with a specialty in heritage studies, concentrating on historical landscapes, material culture, cultural memory, the built environment, and regional/place identities. I am also somewhat of an unordained anthropologist and cultural historian. My interests are global, but my scholarship has focused on the eastern United States. I take a particular interest in the confluence of geography, history, and anthropology, and my work draws significantly from historic preservation and historical archaeology. For many years, I have worked professionally as a demographer and socioeconomic analyst alongside my research. I currently work for local government in suburban Washington, D.C.

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University of New England - Australia

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Arkansas State University

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University of the Free State

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Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program

Herb Lapp

Independent Researcher

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Papers by Charles H Wade

Philadelphia’s Last Lighthouse: The Light at Turtle Rock and a Reconsideration of “Obsolete” Landmarks as Built Heritage

The Pennsylvania Geographer, 2021

Boathouse Row, in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park, is one of the city's longstanding heritage lands... more Boathouse Row, in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park, is one of the city's longstanding heritage landscapes. Among this historic collection of buildings stands Turtle Rock Lighthouse, Philadelphia's only remaining lighthouse and one of the few standing in Pennsylvania. Notably, Turtle Rock is embedded within one of the boathouses, the Sedgeley Club, which was the first women's athletic club founded in the United States. This paper traces the co-development of both Turtle Rock Lighthouse and the Sedgeley Club into a single institution as they became significant but lesser-known features of both Philadelphia's social history and heritage landscape. Through this case study's deeper examination of the historical and geographical contexts, I argue that lighthouses are too often overlooked or disregarded elements of cultural landscapes in scholarship and should be better appreciated aspects of our heritage and built environment.

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Georgia's Barnsley Gardens: Preserving a Landscape of the Lost Cause

Historical Geography, 2018

Barnsley Gardens is a former plantation in Adairsville, Georgia, once the home of English cotton ... more Barnsley Gardens is a former plantation in Adairsville, Georgia, once the home of English cotton magnate Godfrey Barnsley (1805-1873). Barnsley Gardens is historically and regionally significant, modeling the tradition of designer Andrew Jackson Downing. It gained fame through its extravagant art collection, fabulous gardens, and its many distinguished visitors. Numerous tragedies beset the family and led to the plantation’s demise, creating an air of loss and melancholy, leaving the manor a vacant ruin for decades. An increased interest in historic preservation in the late twentieth century led to the revival of Barnsley Gardens and its transformation into an upscale resort, all while purposefully preserving the manor as a ruin. Through a landscape analysis of the site’s historical development, I examine the significance of the materiality of the plantation, and argue that Barnsley Gardens was preserved as a ruin to maintain a material connection to the historical and mythical Old South, to tacitly evoke and retain the memory associated with the Myth of the Lost Cause.

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Remembering and Forgetting an American President: A Landscape History of the Harrison Tomb

Historical Geography, 2014

In the village of North Bend, Ohio rest the remains of little-known US President William Henry Ha... more In the village of North Bend, Ohio rest the remains of little-known US President William Henry Harrison. After a long and distinguished military and political career and his election as president in 1840, Harrison earned the dubious distinction of the shortest term in presidential history after falling ill and dying after just one month in office. Following his wishes, Harrison was entombed in an inconspicuous crypt on his North Bend property. For decades afterward, the Harrison Tomb suffered from neglect and vandalism, an artifact that deteriorated along with the memory of this obscure president. There were numerous proposals to preserve the tomb, but nothing materialized. Shortly after World War I, new interest in preserving history and heritage arose, and the tomb received professional preservation and a monument. However, the tomb fell into disrepair again for several more decades until the Ohio Historical Society and a local non-profit restored the grounds and added enhancements to create a park and monumental setting in the 1990s. Through a landscape history approach, this paper traces the evolution of the Harrison Tomb from an austere crypt into a memorial landscape. An historical analysis and comparison to other presidential monuments shows an inequality in the way American society remembers its prominent leaders in the cultural landscape and attendant artifacts. I demonstrate that it was the knowledge and awareness of the Harrison Tomb’s landscape and material culture that provided the impetus to restore it and create a monument for President Harrison after he was essentially forgotten. I argue that, by adopting a more expansive temporal context in which to study landscapes and sites, landscape history provides another perspective on historical research that geographers are well equipped to provide and that others often overlook, which allows historical geographers to enhance and add additional dimensions to the historical record through their specialized abilities in landscape interpretation and analysis.

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The Construction of an Elite Identity: A Landscape History of Dartmouth Hall

Material Culture, 2017

As a member of the Ivy League and as one of the nine Colonial Colleges, Dartmouth College maintai... more As a member of the Ivy League and as one of the nine Colonial Colleges, Dartmouth College maintains a strong local, regional, and national presence. This is evident is in Dartmouth's cultural landscape, particularly the College's most important and enduring icon, the historically and architecturally significant Dartmouth Hall. " Old Dartmouth, " as it is also known, is the site of much of the College's social and cultural history, and it remains a domineering force in Dartmouth's landscape and institutional memory. The strong emotional response to rebuild Dartmouth Hall, following fires in 1904 and 1935, prompted an intense sequence in the College's history to " preserve " an important landmark that continues to influence its contemporary landscape and place identity. This paper examines the significance of Old Dartmouth to the College. Through a landscape history and analysis, I submit that Dartmouth Hall signifies much more than being an old, Colonial-style academic building; rather, it is an artifact symbolizing class, power, and exclusivity. I argue that, against the backdrop of a tumultuous period in New England's social history affecting the region's socioeconomic dynamics, the reconstruction of Dartmouth Hall was the catalyst to the construction of a new identity for Dartmouth College as an elite institution as it transitioned from a remote, liberal arts college to a member of the powerful Ivy League.

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Legends in the Landscape: Myth as Material Culture at Dartmouth College

Material Culture, 2013

Dartmouth College, a member of the elite Ivy League, was founded in 1769 in Hanover, New Hampshir... more Dartmouth College, a member of the elite Ivy League, was founded in 1769 in Hanover, New Hampshire. Dartmouth is famous for its strong sense of community and tradition. Its traditions arose from the intertwining of history and legend and are often evident in material form in the College's cultural landscape. This paper examines Dartmouth's Old Pine, a purportedly mystical tree from the early days of the College that died in 1895. The preserved stump of the Old Pine subsequently transitioned from a natural feature to a cultural artifact. New traditions grew from the remains of the Old Pine in the form of the Class Day ritual and the erection of Bartlett Tower. The interplay between these artifacts in Dartmouth's landscape contributed to the development of a particular sense of place at the College. Through the years, social changes at Dartmouth generated controversies over class, racism, and exclusion in reference to Class Day, which consequently modified the meanings of the artifacts and rituals traditionally associated with the Old Pine. This paper argues that, despite these changes, old traditions and elements of socioeconomic class remain embodied in Dartmouth's cultural landscape and material culture aids in defining a place identity less evident than the one purported from the College's historical record and folk tradition.

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Editorial: A Historical Case for the Role of Regional Geography in Geographic Education

Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 2006

In the history of modern and contemporary academic geography, debates have surged concerning regi... more In the history of modern and contemporary academic geography, debates have surged concerning regional geography as both a method of geographical research and a form of pedagogy. Whereas regional geography dominated the discipline in the first half of the twentieth century, since the mid-1950s controversy has ensued concerning the contributions that regional geography made (and makes) to the advancement of the discipline (Johnston, 1997). In this editorial I examine some of the discourse from the 1950s to the present surrounding the debate on regional geography as an integral part of the discipline and some of the patterns evident from this discourse. It is beyond the scope and the intention of this paper to provide an exhaustive review of these debates. However, opinions by geographers from representative times are provided and framed in their respective historical contexts. I find a recurrence of similar themes as to whether regional geography should or should not remain a part of geographic education, yet despite the years of controversy surrounding this issue, geographers have not come to a clear consensus. Based on this observation, I argue that despite the cyclical trends of regional geography as an ideology and pedagogical philosophy and the longstanding controversy surrounding its preservation in geographic curricula, it serves several important purposes and should remain a fundamental component of geographic training and education. One notices the beginnings of the divergence of geographers' opinions regarding regional geography early on in the literature. Robert S. Platt (1957, p. 187), former President of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), called attention to some of the mutual misunderstandings between advocates and adversaries to the regional approach: " Probably regional geography has been hindered by an old pair of definitions contrasting systematic and regional geography. According to this couplet, systematic geography deals with something about every part of the world, and regional geography deals with everything about some part of the world. Under this limitation, regional geography could not be systematic, and systematic geography could not be regional. " Platt argued that even though this disagreement in the discipline is founded on extreme

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