Local Items

Local Items

"Local Items"

In the second half of the 19th century, local newspapers underwent a broad transformation from being sheets that related “intelligences” of news that was happening in distant places to weeklies that aimed to also inform their local clientele of what was happening in their own towns.  

As a result, editors began to print columns of “local items” as some of them were headed, which were snippets of news about local goings-on.  These included new building construction, demolitions, fires, building additions and repaintings, and even the editors' thoughts about them.  

Editors took a lively interest in the development of their towns, and "local items" columns harbor large amounts of built environment information.