By Kayla Gill
Allies of Eliot, a group of eight PSU community development students, has produced a historic walking tour of Eliot based on a series of interviews conducted by the Eliot Oral Histories Project and on community outreach conducted for the walking tour. The tour is self-guided and consists of an informational booklet with historical photos, and corresponding audio tracks taken from the interviews. Booklets and audio players will be available for checkout from Dishman Community Center, where the tour begins and ends. A condensed brochure version of the booklet and audio mp3s will be available for free download from the project website this summer.
We have immensely enjoyed working with the Eliot Neighborhood. Through listening to the stories of elder residents and interacting with them, we’ve gained a much deeper understanding of the community around us, its past, how it came to be the way it is today, and the perspectives of our neighbors. Our goal for those who take the tour is to provide historical contexts and inspire new insights, and we feel that oral history is a powerful and personal vehicle for doing so. We find that listening to first-hand experiences of long-term residents in the physical settings in which they took place creates a unique juxtaposition that encourages the use of historical imagination. We’d like to thank all involved for their hard work and dedication, and hope that you take a moment to enjoy the tour!
For more information, visit our website, and continue to check back as updates are coming soon.
Eliot Neighborhood 