This case study of the postwar rebuilding of Southwest Washington, D.C., examines the long-term experience of one urban renewal project, from conception, planning, and design, through the construction and occupation of its new built environment. Southwest was one of the earliest, largest, and most comprehensive and varied Title I redevelopment projects in the country. A close look at its built environment demonstrates significant outcomes in terms of building and landscape design, overall neighborhood planning, and accompanying demographic changes. Existing work on Southwest and its postwar peers duly illustrates the racial injustice and physical and social loss that urban renewal produced. This article expands and supplements these narratives with parallel stories of enduring residential structures amid commercial failures, and new community formation where another had been torn apart. The result is a mixed physical and social legacy for urban renewal that has attracted both criticism and commemoration.
River Park and Its Neighbors: 25 Years of Urban Renewal, 1963-1988 (Washington, DC: Reynolds Metals Company, 1988), Washingtoniana Division, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, DC (hereafter MLK).
2.
While the Housing Act of 1949 focused on "redevelopment," a process of slum clearance and reconstruction, the Housing Act of 1954 tempered the emphasis on demolition with the introduction of "urban renewal." This second approach to urban revitalization emphasized rehabilitation and conservation when possible, alongside redevelopment when necessary. As a product of the Housing Act of 1949, the project in Southwest focused primarily on redevelopment. Nevertheless, many historians, journalists, and local observers use urban renewal to refer to both of these phenomena. I have adopted that practice in this article.
3.
Gillette studies the politics of planning to demonstrate the long-standing battle between physical aesthetics and racial and social justice in the nation’s capital, using the urban renewal of Southwest as just one of several case studies; Howard Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
4.
For some of the most vocal criticism from the era, see Herbert Gans, Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962); Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961); and Martin Anderson, The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical Analysis of Urban Renewal, 1949-1962 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1964). Several historians demonstrate the application of urban renewal as "Negro removal," including, e.g., Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); David Schuyler, A City Transformed: Redevelopment, Race, and Suburbanization in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1940-1980 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002); and Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
5.
For documentary footage from one such annual reunion of former Southwest residents, see Dolores Smith, Southwest Remembered: A Story of Urban Renewal, video (Washington, DC: Lamont Productions, 1990). Gatherings of this sort have been common in many postrenewal cities, including Los Angeles’s Chavez Ravine neighborhood and New Haven’s Oak Street area.
6.
Typical of this front-end focused work is Thomas O’Connor, Building a New Boston: Politics and Urban Renewal, 1950-1970 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993). O’Connor is interested in the political personalities and oppositional forces behind the two decades of Boston’s urban renewal implementation. He explicitly leaves "studies of architectural designs, additional research into demographic details," and economic analysis to others.
7.
Historian Jon C. Teaford aptly summarizes many of urban renewal’s shortcomings while drawing on the work of many other scholars: Jon C. Teaford, "Urban Renewal and Its Aftermath," Housing Policy Debate 11, no. 2 (2000): 443-465, http://www.mi.vt.edu/data/files/hpd%2011(2)/hpd%2011(2)_ teaford.pdf. Among other important works in the substantial literature on the history of urban renewal, see, e.g., Christopher Silver, Twentieth-Century Richmond: Planning, Politics, and Race (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984); Janet R. Daly Bednarek, Changing Image of the City: Planning for Downtown Omaha, 1945-1973 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992); Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; John F. Bauman, Public Housing, Race and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920-1974 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); Jon C. Teaford, The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America, 1940-1985 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Joel Schwartz, The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and the Redevelopment of the Inner City (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993); and Schuyler, A City Transformed.
8.
Jeanne R.Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time: Progress and Poverty in America’s Renewing Cities (New York: Random House, 1967).
9.
Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson, eds., Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York (New York: Norton, 2007).
10.
Richard Longstreth , "The Difficult Legacy of Urban Renewal," CRM: The Journal of Heritage Stewardship 3, no. 1(Winter 2006): 6-23, http://crmjournal.cr.nps.gov/.
11.
In its long-term temporal scope, this article follows the example of works like Larry Keating’s biography of the Techwood Homes public housing development in Atlanta. In the case of Southwest, however, rather than falling victim to the latest design trends as Techwood Homes did, the well-occupied (in this case, urban renewal) housing has generally endured: Larry Keating and Carol A. Flores, "Sixty and Out: Techwood Homes Transformed by Friends and Enemies," Journal of Urban History 26, no. 3 (March 2000): 275-311.
12.
Several key works provide finer detail on the urban renewal of Southwest beyond what is possible in the limited space of this article. For a comprehensive overview of nearly every building erected in the new Southwest, see Historic American Buildings Survey [Francesca Russello Ammon, historian], "Southwest Washington, DC, Urban Renewal Area," HABS No. DC-856, 2004. On the planning process behind Southwest’s urban renewal, see Frederick Gutheim and Antoinette J. Lee, Worthy of the Nation: Washington, DC, from L’Enfant to the National Capital Planning Commission, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). On the major figures and play-by-play process of urban renewal in action in Southwest, see Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time. On the architecture of many of the most notable new buildings erected in Southwest, see Pamela Scott and Antoinette J. Lee, Buildings of the District of Columbia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
13.
The Board of Health’s main objective was the preservation of public health, rather than that of the alley residents. As an 1877 report noted, "the greatest public economy, viz., the preservation of public health, is defeated by allowing these filthy, worthless, dependent classes of humanity to congregate in the alleys and by-ways out of sight and, therefore, out of mind." Report of the Board of Health of the District of Columbia, 1877, quoted in William Henry Jones, The Housing of Negroes in Washington, D.C.; A Study in Human Ecology (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1929), 34; George M. Kober, The History and Development of the Housing Movement in the City of Washington, D.C. (Washington, DC: Washington Sanitary Improvement Company, 1907), 9.
14.
Kober, The History and Development of the Housing Movement (1907), 11-13, 23. Of particular note in Southwest was the 1914 construction by the Washington Sanitary Improvement Company of Carrollsburg Place, a row house development for black tenants. For more on the Washington Sanitary Improvement Company and its sister organization, the Washington Sanitary Housing Company, and its philanthropic work in Southwest, see Elizabeth Hannold, "‘Comfort and Respectability’: Washington’s Philanthropic Housing Movement," Washington History 5, no. 1 (Fall/ Winter 1992-93): 20-39.
15.
The ADA was the country’s first local housing authority. Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 136-39; U.S. NCPPC, Housing and Redevelopment; A Portion of the Comprehensive Plan for the National Capital and Its Environs (Washington, DC: U.S. GPO, 1950), 26; James Borchert, Alley Life in Washington: Family, Community, Religion, and Folklife in the City, 1850-1970 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980), 52-54.
16.
Borchert, Alley Life in Washington, 45-52; Jerome S. Paige and Margaret M. Reuss, "Safe, Decent and Affordable: Citizen Struggles to Improve Housing in the District of Columbia, 1890-1982," in Housing Washington’s People: Public Policy in Retrospect, eds. Steven J. Diner and Helen Young (Washington, DC: D.C. History & Public Policy Project, Dept. of Urban Studies, University of the District of Columbia, 1983), 77.
17.
As in many clearance projects, select photographs of particularly dilapidated sites helped cement a picture of the neighborhood that ignored the presence of other, unpictured, sound, and well-maintained structures. Joseph Curtis points out this discrepancy in Southwest in his testimony at River Park’s 25th anniversary celebration; Joseph Curtis, Transcript, River Park and Its Neighbors: 25 Years of Urban Renewal, 1963-1988: Panels on Southwest Redevelopment and River Park Mutual Homes Development, Saturday October 15, 1988, 67-70, Washingtoniana Division, MLK. On the relationship between photography and slum clearance, more generally, see John Tagg, "God’s Sanitary Law: Slum Clearance and Photography in Late Nineteenth-Century Leeds," The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988): 117-152.
18.
U.S. NCPC, Urban Renewal Plan, Southwest Urban Renewal Project Area C: A Report of Existing Conditions and a Plan for Urban Renewal. Adopted on April 5, 1956 by the National Capital Planning Commission (Washington, DC, 1956), Appendix A3; Daniel Thursz, Where Are They Now? A Study of the Impact of Relocation on Former Residents of Southwest Washington, Who Were Served in an HWC Demonstration Project (Washington, DC: Health and Welfare Council of the National Capital Area, 1966), 21-23; D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA), Annual Report, 1953, v; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1954, 11; Harland Bartholomew & Associates, Redevelopment Plans for the Southwest Survey Area in the District of Columbia; Prepared Under the Direction of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission for the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency (St. Louis, May 1952), 3.
19.
On the "urban crisis" and causes of decentralization, see, e.g., Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis; and Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
20.
Los Angeles came closest, with a 22 percent increase between 1930 and 1940, and New York followed with 8 percent. The other 25 largest cities averaged growth of less than 1 percent.
21.
U.S. Census Bureau, "Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 to 1990," http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027.html (accessed December 1, 2005); Harland Bartholomew, "The American City," Vital Speeches of the Day 7, no. 2 (November 1, 1940): 61-62.
22.
National Committee on Segregation in the Nation’s Capital and Kenesaw M. Landis, Segregation in Washington: A Report, November 1948 (Chicago, 1948), 23-24. For a historical analysis of the District’s population of blacks and whites, see U.S. NCPPC, People and Land; A Portion of the Comprehensive Plan for the National Capital and Its Environs (Washington, DC: U.S. GPO, 1965).
23.
Analysis performed by the Housing Committee of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO); quoted in Steven J. Diner, "The Regulation of Housing in the District of Columbia: An Historical Analysis of Policy Issues," in Housing Washington’s People: Public Policy in Retrospect, 20-21.
24.
Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 144-45.
25.
Arthur Goodwillie, The Rehabilitation of Southwest Washington As a War Housing Measure, A Memorandum to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (Washington, DC, 1942), 1, 4, 6; Merlo Pusey, "Wartime Washington; Mr. Goodwillie’s Captivating Plan," Washington Post, March 10, 1942, 11, ProQuest Historical Newspapers (hereafter PQHN).
26.
Instead, Congress endorsed the construction of single and dormitory units elsewhere. Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 145-46; Charles Mercer, "Conference Passes D.C. War Housing," Washington Post, April 3, 1942, 21, PQHN.
27.
U.S. Congress, District of Columbia Redevelopment Act of 1945; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1959, 4. On the history of the RLA, see Elaine B. Todd, "Urban Renewal in the Nation’s Capital: A History of the Redevelopment Land Agency in Washington, D.C., 1946-1973" (PhD diss., Howard University, 1986).
By 1963, James Wilson had concluded, "The higher the level of indigenous organization in a lower-class neighborhood, the poorer the prospects for renewal in that area"; James Q. Wilson, "The Citizen in the Renewal Process," Journal of Housing 20 (1963): 625.
31.
Page and Reuss, "Safe, Decent and Affordable," 85-88; see also U.S. Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, "Conference on Marshall Heights," December 12-13, 1949.
32.
Congress renamed the NCPPC the NCPC in 1952.
33.
Peets and his coauthor, Werner Hegemann, argued that although it is much harder to be an artist than a businessman or engineer, the architect must pay attention to the design of civic art if he is to produce civilized cities. Despite Peets’s advocacy of the artistic side of design, he still paid close attention to the economics of development, as shown, e.g., by his New Deal housing designs. Werner Hegemann and Elbert Peets, The American Vitruvius: An Architect’s Handbook of Civic Art (New York: Architectural Book Publishing, 1922), 1-6.
34.
Goodwillie, The Rehabilitation of Southwest Washington As a War Housing Measure, 10-12.
35.
Robert Wrigley Jr., "Development Plans for the Southwest Survey Area of Washington, D.C.,"Journal of the American Institute of Planners18-19 (1952-1953), 194.
36.
Louis Justement , New Cities for Old: City Building in Terms of Space, Time, and Money (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1946), 6, 142.
37.
Harland Bartholomew & Associates, Redevelopment Plans for the Southwest Survey Area, 27; U.S. National Capital Planning Commission and Frederick Gutheim, Worthy of the Nation: The History of Planning for the National Capital (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977), 316-17. See also the revised second edition.
38.
The NCPC commissioned Bartholomew to assess both proposals based on his interpretation of the comprehensive plan. His resulting report tread a middle ground, combining rehabilitation and new development and targeting a lower- to moderate-income population; Harland Bartholomew and Associates, Redevelopment Plans for the Southwest Survey Area, 19.
39.
U.S. NCPC, Redevelopment Plan; Southwest Redevelopment Project, Area B. A Report of Existing Conditions and a Plan for Development Adopted on October 24, 1952 ( Washington, DC, 1952), 20-23.
40.
Quoted in U.S. NCPC and Gutheim, Worthy of the Nation, 317.
41.
As one developer, William Zeckendorf, wrote of this moment, "There was not a major builder in America who would touch a Title I project"; William Zeckendorf and Edward McCreary, The Autobiography of William Zeckendorf (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), 208. Using Robert Moses’s urban renewal work in New York City as her case study, Hilary Ballon further explores the reasons behind Title I’s slow success at attracting private capital, including the inherent real estate profitability of slums, perverse FHA regulations, and much bureaucratic red tape; Hilary Ballon, "Robert Moses and Urban Renewal: The Title I Program," in Robert Moses and the Modern City, eds. Ballon and Jackson, 103.
42.
As of December 1970, the area’s total redevelopment value was $503,330,000, with 63 percent coming from private enterprise and the remainder from federal and local government. The total redevelopment value "represents the value of the land, completed works, and the value of works in place, when completed"; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1970, 27.
43.
Area A, a primarily industrial site in the northeast corner of the renewal area, was initially intended to be the first project, but it was later incorporated into Area C when progress proceeded more slowly than expected. Area C-1, another industrial site, was initially part of Area C. The NCPC later separated it out in an attempt to speed the development of the non-industrial parts of Area C. As Area C-1 covered only 30 acres, housed only 3 percent of the relocated population, and was relatively insignificant to the overall project, it is not discussed in this article.
44.
The redevelopment plan offered the following additional characteristics of Area B. Less than 13 percent of Area B’s residential units were owner-occupied. Nearly a third lacked electricity, a third lacked indoor running water, 60 percent had no inside toilet, and more than 80 percent had no central heating. In total, the RLA deemed 80 percent of its units substandard. Up to 97.5 percent of the residents were black. D.C. RLA, Administrative History of the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency-The Southwest Projects (Washington, DC, 1960), 15; U.S. NCPC, Urban Renewal Plan . . . Area C, Appendix A3; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1952, 14; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1953, v; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1954, 11.
Richard L. Lyons, "Land Agency Buys 1st Area B Property," Washington Post, December 9, 1953, 7, PQHN; George Beveridge, "Cole Launches Demolition of Area B Units," Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 26, 1954; Albert J. Headley Jr., Papers Relating to Southwest Washington D.C. and Urban Renewal, 1945-1978, Washingtoniana Division, MLK (hereafter, AJH); D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1954, 5.
48.
In his decision, Justice William O. Douglas wrote: "The concept of the public welfare is . . . broad and inclusive, and the values it represents are spiritual and aesthetic, as well as physical and monetary. . . . A determination that the public welfare requires the community to be beautiful, spacious, and well balanced, as well as healthy, clean, and carefully patrolled, is within the power of the legislature. . . . Congress may, without violating the Fifth Amendment, determine that private enterprise should be used to attain this object, notwithstanding that, since the redevelopment involves the exercise of eminent domain, property is taken from one businessman for the benefit of another." Berman et al., Executors, v. Parker et al., No. 22, Supreme Court of the United States, November 22, 1954, Lexis-Nexis; see also D.C. RLA, "This Is RLA," 4.
49.
As their rationale, the FHA cited Bush’s previous participation in its Section 608 program. This war housing insurance program had provided federal mortgage guarantees for midpriced housing, but it was then under investigation in light of the financial windfalls that participating developers had experienced. Although the FHA later reinstated the company’s eligibility, by then it was too late to continue their involvement in the project. Federal City Council, Urban Renewal Program in the District of Columbia: Report and Recommendations to the Committee on the District of Columbia of the House of Representatives (Washington, DC: The Council, 1961), 27; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1961, 4; D.C. RLA, Administrative History, 31-32.
50.
Prior to this private loan issue from the John Hancock Life Insurance Company, the developers had problems on the public loan front as well, with the FHA initially offering them a loan of only 74 percent, rather than the expected 90 percent; D.C. RLA, Administrative History, 32-33, 78.
51.
James M. Goode, "Modernism Reigns Supreme, 1946-1973," in Best Addresses: A Century of Washington’s Distinguished Apartment Houses (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988), 408-9; "First Step toward a New Washington" Architectural Forum 111 (December 1959): 118; Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time, 182-86, 194-95.
52.
I. M. Pei, "Urban Renewal in Southwest Washington," AIA Journal 39, no. 1 (January 1963): 68; "First Step Toward a New Washington," 115.
53.
D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1959, 15; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1961, 241; Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time, 188.
54.
D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1963, 9.
55.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Housing: 1960, Vol. III, City Blocks, Series HC(3), No. 105 (Washington, DC: U.S. GPO, 1961), Table 2; U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Housing: 1970, Block Statistics, Final Report HC(3)-44 Washington, D.C.-Md.-Va. Urbanized Area (Washington, DC: U.S. GPO, 1971), Table 2.
56.
Robert E. McLaughlin, "Opening Statement," in Government of the District of Columbia, "Public Hearing: Revision of Redevelopment Plan for Southwest Project Area ‘B,’" July 17, 1959, 2, AJH; Charles A. Horsky, "Statement of Charles A. Horsky, President Washington Housing Association on Proposed Changes in the Redevelopment Plan for Southwest Redevelopment Project Area B," July 17, 1959, 4, AJH.
57.
Classified Ad for Capitol Park Apartments, Washington Post, April 19, 1959, D8, PQHN.
58.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Housing: 1950, Vol. V, Block Statistics, Part 202 (Washington, DC: U.S. GPO, 1952), Table 3; U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Housing: 1960, Vol. III, City Blocks, Series HC(3), No. 105, Table 2. All dollar amounts adjusted for inflation to reflect 1960 values using the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
59.
U.S. NCPC, Urban Renewal Plan . . . Area C, Appendix A3.
60.
"William Zeckendorf: Mr. Redevelopment,"Journal of Housing14, no. 9 (October 1957): 318; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1955, 8.
61.
George Beveridge , "Garrett Untangling Southwest Plans; Only 2 Courses of Mediation Seen," Evening Star (March 1955), AJH.
62.
Webb & Knapp, A Redevelopment Plan for Southwest Washington, D.C.; A Webb & Knapp Project (New York, [195?]); U.S. NCPC, Urban Renewal Plan . . . Area C, 15.
63.
Federal City Council, Urban Renewal Program in the District of Columbia, 31.
64.
"Terms of SW Plan," Washington Post, February 17, 1954, 19, PQHN; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1954, 19.
65.
Anderson Notter Finegold et al., Southwest Waterfront Study; Prepared Under Contract to the Federal City Council, for Presentation to the International Cultural and Trade Center Task Force (Washington, DC, September 1983), 8-9; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1959, 21.
66.
Zeckendorf and McCreary, The Autobiography of William Zeckendorf, 210-11.
67.
One reason for Webb & Knapp’s financial difficulties was the high interest rates at which it agreed to borrow money for its numerous real estate projects; Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time, 174. Jack Eisen, "Town Center Is Sold by Webb-Knapp," Washington Post, July 25, 1963, A1, PQHN; Helen Dewar, "Builder to Change Southwest Design," Washington Post, July 27, 1964, B1, PQHN; George Lardner Jr. and Jack Eisen, "Webb-Knapp Sells Last SW Parcel," Washington Post, November 3, 1964, A1, PQHN; Robert J. Lewis, "Construction Nears on L’Enfant Plaza," Evening Star, 1965, AJH.
68.
SW Group Protests Planned Building," Washington Post, January 22, 1970, B4, PQHN.
69.
Kirk Scharfenberg , "250 in SW Seek to Alter Shop Mall Plan There ," Washington Post, February 11, 1972, C1, PQHN.
70.
Southwest Community Council and Southwest Neighborhood Assembly, Southwest Guide, 1965-1966 (Washington, DC: Kirby Lithographic, 1965), 14; Barbara Bright-Saguier and Claudia Levy, "Aid Sought for Waterside Mall," Washington Post, March 3, 1974, K1, PQHN.
71.
On the controversy over the location of the Air and Space Museum, see Robert J. Orr , "Air & Space in the Southwest: The Debate over a Tenth Street Mall," Smithsonian Preservation Quarterly (Winter 1995), http://www.si.edu/oahp/spq/spq95w6.htm .
72.
Karen Greer , "The Renewal of Southwest Washington," unpublished manuscript (1988), 15, City Museum, Washington, DC; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1959, 18.
73.
On the controversy over the center’s location, see Ralph E. Becker, Miracle on the Potomac: The Kennedy Center from the Beginning ( Silver Spring, MD: Bartleby, 1990 ), 16-27.
74.
Estimate of employment in Southwest in 1972 provided in D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1970, 27.
75.
"History," Arena Stage Home Page, http://www.arenastage.com/about/history/ (accessed August 29, 2008).
76.
Zeckendorf and McCreary, The Autobiography of William Zeckendorf, 221.
77.
These design competitions were novel to Southwest, but not new to urban renewal, in general. For example, at least three other cities-Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Santa Monica-also used design competitions in urban renewal; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1962, 20-21; "Architectural Competitions-Design-Minded Cities Try Different Approaches," Journal of Housing 19, no. 1 (January 1962): 16-17.
78.
A 1957 Fortune article lamented that no one had yet built "a combination tower and garden duplex block," but that many architects believed such a residential form would be more economical and livable than other existing options. In Southwest, architects had the chance to put their designs into widespread practice; William H. Whyte Jr., "Are Cities Un-American?" Fortune 24 (September 1957), 127.
79.
Scott and Lee, Buildings of the District of Columbia, 242; River Park and Its Neighbors, 160-61; Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time, 197.
80.
Classified Ad: "Buy Your Own Apartment or Town House in River Park Cooperative," Washington Post, April 14, 1962, B9, PQHN.
81.
"Buyers in River Park Coming from Geneva," Washington Post, March 17, 1962, D7, PQHN.
82.
Marguerite Gilstrap, "Genesis of a Community," in River Park and Its Neighbors, 1-3.
83.
Wolf von Eckardt, ". . . for Every American Family," in A Place to Live: The Crisis of the Cities (New York: Delacorte, 1967), 302.
84.
Quoted in Harrison M. Ethridge, "Southwest Washington: A Blend of Two Centuries," in River Park and Its Neighbors, 9.
85.
"Tiber Island Opens in SW," Washington Post, September 26, 1964, C11, PQHN; Classified Ad: "There Are Some Things You Just Can’t Keep a Secret!" Washington Post, October 6, 1964, C12, PQHN; Classified Ad: "Town Houses on the Waterfront at Tiber Island," Washington Post, April 24, 1965, F3, PQHN.
86.
Classified Ad: "Tiber Island Announces: Wall to Wall Silence!" Washington Post, October 12, 1964, B17, PQHN.
87.
With 99 percent of the neighborhood leveled by the bulldozer, very few buildings from the old Southwest survived urban renewal. Some of those that did endure include Thomas Law House (incorporated into Tiber Island and Carrollsburg Gardens), Duncanson-Cranch House (incorporated into Harbour Square), Wheat Row (incorporated into Harbour Square), Edward Simon Lewis House (incorporated into Harbour Square), Barney House community center, St. Dominic’s Church, First Baptist Church, and Jefferson Junior High School.
88.
Classified Ad for Harbour Square, Washington Post, February 23, 1964, D17, PQHN.
89.
Classified Ad for Harbour Square, Washington Post, June 24, 1963, A28, PQHN.
90.
Goode, " Modernism Reigns Supreme," 410.
91.
This was due, in part, to the 1967 introduction of the Tri-School Plan, which intermixed all Southwest children in the area’s three elementary schools, rather than permitting more affluent children to continue to congregate in urban renewal’s new Amidon School. The result was that many of these children moved to private school. Richard E. Prince, "SW School Project Ends in Failure," Washington Post, July 30, 1976, C1, PQHN.
92.
"Greeted," Washington Post, February 20, 1966, L9, PQHN; Barbara Bright-Saguier and Claudia Levy, "Aid Sought for Waterside Mall," Washington Post, March 3, 1974, K1, PQHN; "Neighbor Humphrey," Washington Post, December 17, 1966, E6, PQHN; Judith Havemann, "Bit of D.C. Urban History Is Burned into Memory; Happy Residents at Renewal Landmark Torch Deed," Washington Post, September 25, 2003, T3, PQHN.
93.
Demographic statistics are based on an analysis of Southwest census tracts in 1950 and 1970. As best as the changing tract boundaries permit, the analysis isolates only the major residential parts of the urban renewal area and excludes adjacent public housing that fell outside the urban renewal area’s bounds. For 1950, it includes tracts 600, 610, and 630; for 1970, it includes tracts 60.1, 61, and 63.01. Wherever available, data came from the U.S. Census of Housing and Population as included in the registered version of Social Explorer (www.socialexplorer.com). Because 1970 employment data were not available from Social Explorer, the following source was used: U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population and Housing: 1970, Census Tracts, Final Report PHC(1)-226 Washington, D.C.-Md.-Va. SMSA (Washington, DC: U.S. GPO, 1972), Table P-3.
94.
Jean White, "First Tenants Moving in at SW Co-Op," Washington Post, November 13, 1962, A2, PQHN. Historian Matthew Lasner has identified similar factors as contributing to the postwar rise of co-operatives and condominiums around the country at this time; Matthew Gordon Lasner, "No Lawn to Mow: Co-ops, Condominiums, and the Revolution in Collective Homeownership in Metropolitan America, 1881-1973" (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2007).
95.
Stephen S. Rosenfeld, "Suburbanites Tell Why They Are Moving to City," Washington Post, December 17, 1961 , B1, PQHN.
96.
Wolf von Eckardt , "Pioneer in Beauty, Livability: New Southwest a Bundle of Boons," Washington Post, October 28, 1962, E2, PQHN.
97.
Sarah B. Conroy, "Quotations Gathered on a Walk in Southwest ," Washington Post, April 8, 1967, G1, PQHN.
98.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population and Housing: 1970, Census Tracts, Final Report PHC(1)-226 Washington, D.C.-Md.-Va. SMSA, Table P-2.
99.
The average for 1950 was estimated based on U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population: 1950, Vol. III, Census Tract Statistics, Chapter 59 (Washington, DC: U.S. GPO), Table 3; for 1970 it was estimated based on U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Housing: 1970, Block Statistics, Final Report HC(3)-44 Washington, D.C.-Md.-Va. Urbanized Area, Table 2. 1950 rent is "contract rent," while 1970 is "gross rent."
100.
Judy Harkison , "Bachelor Balconies," Washington Post, June 23, 1968, G1, PQHN.
101.
Dwelling units from U.S. Census data, as supplied by Social Explorer; condominium and cooperative units from U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population and Housing: 1970, Census Tracts, Final Report PHC(1)-226 Washington, D.C.-Md.-Va. SMSA, Table H-1.
102.
"Religious Poll Leads to New Church in SW," Washington Post, March 7, 1964, PQHN; "History," St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church Home Page, http://www.staugustinesdc.org/article .php?id=19 (accessed August 22, 2008).
D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1960, 13; James Banks, Group interview by author, River Park, Washington, DC, June 24, 2004.
105.
These figures do not include the households that moved on their own, preventing the RLA from tracking them, or those roughly 2 percent of households that were unusually difficult to rehouse. These unusual cases fell into three categories: the low-income elderly, for whom public housing was in short supply; the large family, for whom public housing was not spacious enough; and the family whose income was too high for public housing but too low for market-rate residences; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1960, 16.
106.
Southwest’s former businesses were equally scattered. Of the 95 percent of Southwest’s relocated businesses that were originally located in Areas C and C-1, 28 percent moved to Northwest, 24 percent went to Northeast, 17 percent moved to Southeast, 11 percent relocated within Southwest, and 21 percent left the city. Many businesses however were unable to relocate as they had lost their customer base with the demolition of Southwest. The process for relocating businesses was less structured, with most owners working directly with the private real estate market. Each business received $2,000 to $3,000 from the RLA to cover their losses and moving expenses. D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1960, 21.
107.
Hilary Ballon , "Morningside-Manhattanville Title I," in Robert Moses and the Modern City, eds. Ballon and Jackson, 260-61.
108.
George Beveridge , "Southwest Area Takes on Ghost Town Look," Evening Star, November 21, 1954, AJH.
109.
Thursz, Where Are They Now? 28-34, 48, 54, 57, 71-72.
110.
On Southwest’s rich community life, see the documentary photography of resident Joseph Owen Curtis held in the Washingtoniana Division, MLK. Some examples are included in Paul S. Green, text, Shirley L. Green, photo editing, "Old Southwest Remembered: The Photographs of Joseph Owen Curtis," Washington History 1, no. 2 (Fall 1989): 42-57.
111.
Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 174.
112.
Aaron Latham , "Tourists’ Center Plan Aired," Washington Post, January 6, 1970, D12, PQHN.
113.
On the battles over racialized versions of southern memory embedded in the built environment, and especially the contrast between "preserved shrines of white memory" and the bulldozed landscapes of African American memory in Durham, North Carolina, and Savannah, South Carolina, see W. Fitzhugh Brundage, "Black Memorials and the Bulldozer Revolution," in The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005), 227-69.
114.
Alice M. Rivlin, "Comments," in Jacob L. Vigdor, "Does Gentrification Harm the Poor,"Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs, 2002, 178, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/brookingswharton_papers_on_urban_affairs/v2002/2002.1massey.html .
115.
von Eckardt, A Place to Live, 301, 306; William Raspberry, "Community Spirit Is Stirring in SW," Washington Post, August 3, 1966, B1, PQHN.
116.
"Chester C. Shore Dies; Civil Rights Lawyer,"Washington Post, July 10, 1973, C3, PQHN.
117.
Tract 76, located between L’Enfant Plaza and the Town Square housing development had originally been reserved for construction of a parochial school. When those plans fell through, debate began over how the highly sought after property could be used, with businesses favoring parking, residents seeking some other community use, and housers looking for affordable residences. The legal battle dragged on for years before high-end townhouses eventually went up on the site. Eugene L. Meyer, "Housing Plan Is Voted for Tract in SW," Washington Post, December 20, 1972, C1, PQHN; Margot Hornblower, "Tract Splits Southwest," Washington Post, August 1, 1974, H1, PQHN.
118.
Raspberry, " Community Spirit Is Stirring in SW."
119.
"History," St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church Home Page (accessed August 22, 2008).
120.
William Raspberry , "SW Cocktail Parties Raise Play Money," Washington Post, August 15, 1966, C1, PQHN.
121.
See Southwest D.C. Home Page, http://www.swdc.org/.
122.
Longstreth, "The Difficult Legacy of Urban Renewal"
123.
D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1966, 3.
124.
D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1964, 3.
125.
For example, the AIA awarded Tiber Island a 1966 Honor Award. The jury for the award praised the architects’ achievement of "both monumentality and warmth by honest structure and knowledgeable use of materials," calling it an "outstanding example of a successful urban renewal project, and one which should inspire other developers and their architects." "The 1966 Honor Awards," AIA Journal 46 (July 1966): 30-31; DC RLA, Annual Report, 1962, 20; Scott and Lee, Buildings of the District of Columbia, 243; Goode, "Modernism Reigns Supreme," 411.
126.
von Eckardt, A Place to Live, 304. See also pages 301-6.
127.
The Housing Acts of 1954 and 1956 diminished Title I’s singular focus on housing by permitting the allotment of 10 to 20 percent of redevelopment projects to nonresidential use; Alexander von Hoffman, "A Study in Contradictions: The Origins and Legacy of the Housing Act of 1949," Housing Policy Debate 11, no. 2 (2000): 313-14, http://www.fanniemaefoundation.org/programs/hpd/pdf/ hpd_1102_hoffman.pdf.
128.
By the time construction was nearly complete in 1970, more than 98 percent of the new housing units were either rented or sold; D.C. RLA, Annual Report, 1970, 23. Given Washington, D.C.’s historic housing shortage, planners likely anticipated this result, even in the absence of evidence of any of the housing demand studies that other cities commissioned during this era from consultants like Chester Rapkin.
129.
The value of Southwest’s condominiums grew the second fastest among all 26 neighborhoods in D.C. during this period. D.C. Real Property data tabulated by NeighborhoodInfo DC in District of Columbia Housing Monitor (Summer 2007), 15, http://www.neighborhoodinfodc.org/housing/ DCHousingMonitor_2007_3.pdf (accessed January 29, 2009).
130.
Daniela Deane , "On the Waterfront; Bargain Hunters Discover Hidden Charms of Southwest D.C.’s Condos, Co-ops and Town Houses," Washington Post, November 25, 2000, G1, PQHN.
131.
The 2000 census found that the typical renter in Southwest and all of D.C. had moved into his home three years prior; the typical owner-occupant had moved in 11 years prior in Southwest, and 13 years prior in all of D.C. American Fact Finder (factfinder.census.gov).
132.
U.S. Census data, as reported in Social Explorer.
133.
Deane, " On the Waterfront"
134.
1970 income estimated based on U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population and Housing: 1970, Census Tracts, Final Report PHC(1)-226 Washington, D.C.-Md.-Va. SMSA, Table P-4; 2000 income from U.S. Census data, as reported in Social Explorer.
135.
U.S. Census data for population age twenty-five and older, as reported in Social Explorer.
136.
U.S. Census data for employed civilian population age sixteen and older, as reported in American Fact Finder.
137.
Children are defined here as population under fifteen years old. U.S. Census data as reported in Social Explorer.
138.
Stephanie Cavanaugh, "Going with the Flow on Tiber Island in D.C.," Washington Post, May 1, 2004, G1, PQHN; Kenneth Lelen, "At Capitol Park in SW, Convenience and Value," Washington Post, October 25, 1997, G1, PQHN.
139.
Clara Brewer, Oral history transcript, "Oral History Project 11: Southwest Remembered- Urban Renewal" (April 13, 1985), 7-8, Washingtoniana Division, MLK.
140.
Cavanaugh, "Going with the Flow on Tiber Island in D.C."
141.
Henry Reuss, Oral history transcript, "Oral History Project 11: Southwest Remembered- Urban Renewal" (December 21, 1984), 7, Washingtoniana Division, MLK.
142.
Steven Ginsberg , "Close-Knit in District’s Capitol Park ," Washington Post, June 7, 1997, E1, PQHN.
143.
Sarah B Conroy, "Quotations Gathered on a Walk in Southwest ," Washington Post, April 8, 1967, G1, PQHN.
144.
Reuss, Oral history transcript, 3-5.
145.
Barbara Brannan, Oral history transcript, "Oral History Project 11: Southwest Remembered- Urban Renewal" (July 1, 1984), 35, Washingtoniana Division, MLK.
146.
On the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, see "The Anacostia Waterfront Initiative," District of Columbia Office of Planning Home Page, http://www.planning.dc.gov/planning/cwp/view,a,1285,q,57 1105,planningNav_GID,1708,planningNav,|32341|.asp (accessed December 16, 2005). On Southwest, in particular, see Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alschuler, Inc., Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners LLP, Greenberg Consultants, Inc., Development Plan & AWI Vision for the Southwest Waterfront: Draft. Prepared for National Capital Revitalization Corporation, District of Columbia Office of Planning, Anthony A. Williams, Mayor (Washington, DC, February 6, 2003), http://www.planning .dc.gov/planning/cwp/view,a,1285,q,582417,planningNav_GID,1708.asp (accessed August 1, 2004).
147.
On the current redevelopment of Waterside Mall (renamed "Waterfront"), see Waterfront Home Page, http://waterfrontdc.com/.
148.
Robert Campbell, "Charles River Park at 35; It May Be a Nice Place to Live, But You Wouldn’t Want to Visit," Boston Globe, May 26, 1995, 81, LexisNexis; Teaford, "Urban Renewal and Its Aftermath," 451-53; Longstreth, "The Difficult Legacy of Urban Renewal."
149.
Thomas C. Palmer Jr., "Once Supplanted by Charles River Park, the West End Returns-As It Seeks Future Growth, Owner Renames the Complex to Help Heal Scars of the Past, Boston Globe, May 17, 2007, D1, LexisNexis Academic.
150.
Monica Collins , "Born Again; Flattened 50 Years Ago in the Name of Urban Renewal, the West End Is Once Again in Turmoil over Its Future ," Washington Post, August 7, 2005, 24, ProQuest Newspapers.
151.
The hazards of large-scale projects, all bound up in a single developer, plagued renewal projects in other cities as well. For example, difficulties facing developer Rogers Stevens significantly delayed progress on the downtown Chapel Square Mall project in New Haven, prompting the local paper to question the mayor’s decision to go with just one sponsor; William E. Keish Jr., "Lee and Church Street: Would He Do It Again?" New Haven Register, May 26, 1963.
152.
Although Pittsburgh’s project preceded federal urban renewal legislation and its associated sources of funding, the model of development implemented there matched that of subsequent federally sponsored redevelopment projects around the country; Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time, 162-63.
153.
Longstreth, " The Difficult Legacy of Urban Renewal"
154.
Retail historians Peter Blackbird and Brian Florence founded the Web site Deadmalls.com in 2000 to catalog a growing list of retail successes and failures around the country.
155.
Ballon, "Columbus Circle Title I," in Robert Moses and the Modern City, eds. Ballon and Jackson, 263-67. There are, of course, exceptions to this pattern, with New York City’s Lincoln Center being one of the most prominent. On the powerful and well-connected constituency, known as Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., that formed to make this project happen, see Samuel Taylor Zipp, "Manhattan Projects: Cold War Urbanism in the Age of Urban Renewal" (PhD diss., Yale University, 2006).
