"A Nice Tasty Cottage"

Horaceville. Hal Miller for the Ottawa Journal, May 31, 1941,
Taken from the Pinhey's Point Foundation website

For those who do not know, our first project for our digital history class is a digital landscape project which requires us to choose an area or a building and demonstrate how it changed over time using the digital tools of our choice. For my project, I have chosen Horaceville at Pinhey's Point in Ottawa. The site is part of the City of Ottawa Museum Network and is located at 270 Pinhey’s Point Road, Dunrobin, Ontario.

This house was built by Hamnett Kirkes Pinhey, an English immigrant who arrived in 1820. He was one of the first settlers in March Township. He designed his Georgian style stone manor to be an imposing figure on the Ottawa River riverbank, but it was only in 1849 that the house was completed.

The first part of the house was a two storey log cabin covered in clapboard.This is where the Pinhey family settled. When the Earl of Dalhousie came to visit in 1821, he referred to this house as a "nice tasty cottage with veranda".

Soon after the visit, Hamnett built a large stone attachment onto his wood house. Completed in 1822, this was primarily a ballroom/parlour on the first floor and bedrooms or servant's quarters on the second floor.

Sketch of Horaceville by Marry Anne Pinhey ca. 1830

The next two additions were not added until the 1840s. The central part of the house was added in 1841 and includes the hall, complete with grand staircase, the dining room, a second kitchen and a master bedroom. The house was finally completed in 1849 with the addition of a drawing room and a study on the first floor and bedrooms on the second floor.

Upon his death, Hamnett left the house to his children and it remained in the family until the death of the last occupant, Ruth Pinhey (Hammett's great-granddaughter), in 1971. Ruth had been living there alone for the latter part of her life and when she passed, the house went to her nephew who sold it to the Township of March.

Because of the declining fortunes of the family, the house had fallen into disrepair and eventually the original wooden section of the house was dismantled.The remainder of the house had major restoration work done during the' 80s and '90s and the property is now maintained by the City of Ottawa.

Ruins of the original kitchen

I intend to bring the former glory of this house back to life by making a 3D model of it in Sketchup. Using floorplans and pictures, I will attempt to recreate all the stages of construction and the building's interior and exterior as faithfully as possible. To showcase my work, I will make a video tour of the house which chronicles the different stages of construction and deterioration.

My first step is to familiarize myself with Sketchup. Afterwards, I will make a preliminary model based on floor plans of the house. I will continue to model each stage of the building of the house so that they can be seen separately from the whole. When the 3D modeling is complete, I will attempt to furnish the interior and add colour and texture to the house to make it more realistic and visually interesting. When this is done, I will shoot a video tour of the inside and outside of the house and of the different stages of construction and then edit it to make a short movie.

Pinhey's Point Spring 2013

The results of this project are geared towards museum visitors and anyone who is interested in the site. I intend to upload the video to YouTube so that everyone can have access to it and I hope to publish the 3D reconstruction of the modern house on Google earth for people to enjoy.








Works consulted:
Pinhey's Point Foundation website, http://www.pinheyspoint.ca/

An Interactive Digital World

This morning as I was getting ready for the day ahead, I was listening to the CBC Radio show Fresh Air with Mary Ito. One interview in particular caught my attention. Mary was talking with director Katerina Cizek who has just received an Emmy award for her documentary series "A Short History of the Highrise". I love documentaries in general, but this one was particularly intriguing because it is an interactive documentary. I had never heard of such a thing though it did not surprise me since other traditional media such as books and cards are making their way into the interactive world of digital.

In the interview, Katerina Cizek talked about how the content was presented like a children's pop-up book. This is definitely the feeling I got when I checked it out. The documentary which presents 2,500 years of history of the highrise has many features that brought me back to my childhood, but it also has elements my popup books could never do. The images are brought to life with animation and some of the extra content is presented as a game or with a tab that you have to pull to make the text appear.

The narration is in prose and often uses familiar language, a strange combination to my mind but a highly effective one. The prose gently guides you through the subject matter and the language is accessible to most, but perhaps less to an older demographic.

The extra content is the interesting feature of this documentary. In each subsection of the documentary, you have the option to investigate more content. Pictures, audio from specialists, mini games and interactives bring the subject matter to life.

The pictures are interesting because you can click to see the back of them which contains information about the image, locations, dates and history, as well as accession numbers and collection information. It is a nice way to present this information because it does not detract from the picture by being placed right next to it. You also have the option to view the information or not.

Some of the backs are also the actual reverse of the picture so you can see any information that it contains. This information would often not be digitized at all and if it were, it would not appear in a documentary film. Many of the pictures are from the Times' photography archive and they appear with all the original marks on them and the accession numbers. It gives a real sense that these are real pictures and it connects the audience with the archives and the process of research which is often lacking in other documentaries.

The choice to present this documentary as a short is also highly effective. It takes into account the short attention spans of digital users and does not overwhelm the viewer with information. It is also well structures as each topic is divided into a different part in the series which makes it is easy to understand and follow.

I was highly impressed with this documentary. It gives a good overview of the subject while providing more depth than a normal short documentary might provide. The concept of interactive documentaries is intriguing. It gives the viewer more power over what they are watching and transforms the passive experience of watching a documentary into an active and engaging process. I hope to see more in this medium in the future and I think the museum would be a great place to apply it.