Upstate Historical

UpstateHistorical is an interactive website and smartphone app brings the rich history of upstate New York to life for tourists, residents, and anyone interested in learning more about this important region. It uses Curatescape, a web-based platform that uses GPS to allow administrators to pin key historical locations and upload story-based text, photographs, audio, and video content to tell the story of a particular place, the people that lived there, and events at that location.

The histories of individual locations throughout Upstate New York are brought to life through the media uploaded to the site, with written descriptions to fully contextualize the content. Visitors to New York can use the site to learn about the places they see, and curious residents can rediscover the places they’ve seen many times before. UpstateHistorical also provides small historical tours that users can conduct themselves, and is continually being updated.

Funding from this project comes from the New York Council for the Humanities as well as additional support from the Syracuse University Humanities Center and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild.

Resources and content has been generously provided by the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild and the Winterthur Library.

A native of Upstate New York, Tom Guiler researches and teaches 19th and 20th century American cultural and social history and has particular interests in the history of Upstate New York, material culture, business, international relations, social protest, decorative arts, and the digital and public humanities. His research interests focus on utopian and intentional communities in 19th– and 20th-century America and resulted in his dissertation on communal groups in the Arts and Crafts Movement: Roycroft, Byrdcliffe, and Rose Valley. He has published in Pennsylvania History and Communal Societies and has received grants, awards, and fellowships from the Communal Studies Association, the New York Council for the Humanities, the Popular Culture / American Culture Association, the University of Rochester, and Syracuse University. He is currently Assistant Professor of History and Public Humanities at the Winterthur Museum, Library, and Gardens in Winterthur, Delaware.