This map visualizes structured data extracted from the The Woods New Orleans business directory, a historical directory published by Allen T. Woods in multiple editions between approximately 1907 and 1915. The data here is extracted from 1911, 1912, and 1913. The directory listed Black-owned and Black-serving businesses, organizations, societies, churches, and professionals across New Orleans.
The source material is held by the Library of Congress. Entries were extracted from digitized page scans using an OCR and named-entity recognition pipeline, then geocoded to place each listing on the map.
N.B. There are certainly geocoding errors because addresses, streets, and locations have changed since 1911-1913, and because geocoders make errors; this map is meant to provide one means of engaging with this directory more deeply, and has not been reviewed for 100% accuracy.
How to use:
This is an example output of the Directory Pipeline, an open-source tool for extracting structured data from digitized historical directories.