Topic: "The City of the Seventies": Louisville's "West" urban renewal, part I

[Jeffrey]

The start of a set of occasional posts looking at Louisville’s urban renewal zones.  This is an aspect of Louisville often neglected, but might be interesting for history buffs and urban studies geeks.

This will be a quick walk around the west of downtown urban renewal zone.  All told about 21-24 square blocks were affected.



Note the arched light poles.  This was the initiative of Congressman and later mayor Burke, who was a pretty colorless person, but got the job done.  He was happy to be known for small stuff like that.  Burke was the last of the old “establishment” Democrats before the neighborhood movements elected Harvey Sloan in the 1970s. 



But the character of the area is clear…very low slung, low density, decorative landscaping, wide streets.

The Greyhound station, in concrete.  One of the themes here is the preference for concrete design & construction during this era in Louisville.  Nearly everything here was built in the very late 1960s or early 1970s.



….another example being Blanton House, from I think 1969 or 70 .  At 20 stories this was one of the tallest buildings downtown when built.  Design-wise this is better than the usual “projects” tower one might see in Chicago or Detroit.

The low-rise mansardic style apartments were built in the early 1970s.  I think they are either market rate or section 8, but they were built by a private developer.



From 1968-1969, one of the first buildings to go up in the urban renewal zone, is the Federal Building.  Yet another example of Louisville concrete design, this was locally designed by a joint venture.  It has some funky detailing on that façade (some Breur influence), especially the polished granite panels on the low rise “base”.  Nice park in the front, which was landscaped in the early-mid 1970s.



Across the street heading north was, in my memory, big long blocks of grassy fields until one reached city hall.  So this part of downtown had a weird empty feel to it.  Then they started building.  From the mid 1970s this was the old South Central Bell regional office, designed to be higher than it is (note how the top looks cut off).  Now AT&T.  A good example of monolithic late corporate modernism. 

 

(the old deco SCB building is in the background)


The wide open spaces of downtown Louisville.  The low rise white boxy building in the background is part of Black History as it was the old Mammoth Life Insurance company offices on Walnut Street.   This was a black owned insurance company that filled the gap during the Jim Crow era when white companies wouldn’t sell policies to blacks.  Mammoth sold “weekly debit” policies, where the agents would collect small premiums on a weekly basis, making it easier to pay the premium.  The building was built in 1925 and modernized in the late 1960s.  Mammoth had offices in Ohio, too, including Dayton.



I mentioned these blocks were all grass during the early 1970s before construction.  In this case the telephone company kept part of their block as open space, a private park for their employees.  Downtown proper in the background.



Continuing north toward the river.


The business end of the Greyhound Station.  A place I know well.  We used to pick up my grandparents here when they visited from Chicago since they were carless, and I came through here many times on my way home from college since I was carless, too, during college days.



In the background, the twin of Blanton House, set at an angle, has the housing authority offices in the lower floors.  The brick thing in the foreground was built in 1974 or 1975, and is local example of early postmodernism.  It was some social welfare agency or nonprofit.



Looking west on Muhammed Ali Boulevard, AKA Walnut Street.  This was the black business district (135 business listings from 13th to 6th Street, including some popular jazz spots), but began to decline in the 1950s, and was totally removed (except for Mammoth Life) in the 1960s via urban renewal.   As they used to say:  urban renewal = negro removal.  Sort of.

The bus station is by the Harrison and Abramowitz, the famous NYC architectural office.



From urban shopping street to….a TV studio for Fox network affiliate.  Kind of a weird design.  I sort of get that stair & plaza thing, but why sink the station below grade?



From grassy field to…parking lot?  The low rise in the back survived urban renewal as I think it was police HQ or some govt. office.  The red brick thing behind it is new (used to be Metro Sewer District), as was the building barley visible behind it (county jail).  So this used to be more “open” in the early 1970s.

In the background, the real Louisville skyline…towers popping up over a sea of lower buildings.  The cum shot is from across the river or from the east with the skyscrapers bunched together.  You don’t experience that on the ground. 



The two high rises sort give you that Dayton feel…buff concrete tower near a black steel and glass tower.  In this case the steel & glass tower was by Harrison & Abramowitz and the concrete tower (made up of precast panels) was by LA architect Welton Beckett.   When I moved to Louisville the concrete building was the tallest building in the city and the only thing over 20 stories.

@@@

More urban renewal stuff.  The high rise is some courts building.  But the low rises are the typical urban renewal “infill”, sort of spec offices of various types. 



Heading back south….



More concrete frame spec offices. 



Yummy!  More Concrete!  Note how when they did urban renewal they saved a tree or two from the backyards of the demolished houses.  And note the nifty modernist parking lot lights.  So now!  So wow!  Louisville, City of the Seventies!  (old chamber of commerce slogan from this era)



Juvenile detention center or vocational ed building?  Hmmm……



Heading west on Chestnut.   I wonder about the trees.  They might be old enough to date from the urban renewal era, so maybe it was a good idea to plant a lot of trees.



A view back north toward Blanton House, the courts building, etc, etc, catching the openness + tower-as-urban-design-accent thing going on here, plus the US and Commonwealth of Kentucky flag….”..weep no more my lady, blah blah blah”.



Parking Lots!  Urban renewal zones just wouldn’t be the same without generous surface parking.  In the background one can see the L&N terminal complex. The L&N is what built Louisville into a big city after the Civil War, as it extended beyond Nashville to Birmingham, Montgomery, and then on to Pensacola, Mobile and New Orleans, making Louisville a regional economic player in the deep South.



…and a close up of that.  The big long building was L&N corporate HQ from 1904-1906 (built in stages), and a reminder that the railroads where the first big corporations.  L&N departed years ago for the CSX mothership in Jacksonville, but the city still pays to keep the giant animated red neon L&N logo sign going at night.  Next door is the limestone Romanesque Union Station, which has a similar twin in Nashville.



The last of Magazine Street with Mayor Burke’s fancy streetlights.  Magazine in this case is “powder magazine”, not the kind you read.  In the background the last phase of the Village West housing project.



Another one of those sinister looking ed facilities.  You can just see the machine gun nests providing overwatch from the three band windows over the doors.




…and, in contrast, the only old thing standing in this part of the urban renewal zone.  The last work by famed (in Kentucky) architect Gideon Shyrock, designer of various antebellum ladmarks.



Ninth Street is the dividing line between “the projects” part of the urban renewal zone and the public/business part.  Looking south, the intent was for this to connect with the “Southwest Radial” expressway, which would terminate at the Gene Snyder outer belt, providing access to the southern suburbs.  This downtown stretch was probably going to be turned into limited access and then connect up with the elaborate 9th Street Interchange at I-64 on the river. 



The 9th street interchange was built.  This four lane divided highway was built.  But the Southwest Radial was cancelled in the 1970s due to lack of will, money, and a small freeway revolt.  So this road dead-ended about two blocks in the distance, south at Broadway.  For years.  Until the past two or three years when it was extended further south to connect up with 7th Street (which is a way into downtown from the south/southwest).


@@@

Across the street Village West.  Built in phases starting in the 1960s, it’s going to get its own thread. But note how the project is separated from the highway via berms….leaving room for future conversion to limited access?



And here I run out of “film”.   I was struck by how wide the median is here, and how landscaped.  In the distance one can see Beecher Terrace, yet another housing project.



…which we will see in a future thread.

To recap, a historical look, showing how these massive urban renewal projects transformed the city.

An 1873 map of the city, with the major downtown urban renewal zones in red tint, the 1856 platted area outlined in red, and the mostly built up areas in 1856 outlined by a yellow dotted line



As one can see  the urban renewal zones obliterated areas that might have had quite a bit of antebellum construction, which would represent the removal of a significant part of the cities architectural patrimony.  True, there would be a lot of building substitution going on, but perhaps closer to the river and in the core area of downtown between 6th and 3rd (and a lot of that was removed too, in various ways).

A close up



The  city in 1917, showing the degree of growth due to the “New South” industrial /trading boom of the late 19th and early 20th century.



And a close up, with certain features of the west urban renewal area labeled, showing some things we’ve seen and the black business district on Walnut, contrasting to the ”white business district” on 4th, which was the spine of downtown growth south from the river.



I didn’t realize this until recently, but urban renewal, combined with erosion due to parking lots, really did a number on Louisville.   This is almost on Detroit scale (another city that removed its oldest neighborhoods).

 

[airforce_jm]

I've never been to Louisville but some of those shots make it look alot like Dayton. I'd hope there is a little more going on in Louisville though.

[jmecklenborg]

I'm well-acquainted with this area since I've ridden Greyhound many times through Louisville.  It's totally horrible. 

[ColDayMan]

Depressing!

[westerninterloper]

Those nifty lights look more like security cameras, but I guess they wouldn't need three.

[LAsam]

This thread sucked a little bit of my soul out of me... dear lord.

[Cincinnatus]

I bet Sherman thinks this place is hopping.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Some of the concrete buildings remind me of set of "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes". Queue up title card reading "NORTH AMERICA - 2009".

[edale]

Hm, very interesting.

[jmecklenborg]

There's a part 2?  Make it stop. 

[Jeffrey]

^
heh, yeah, suburbia on a grid.

Unlike Cincinnati and Dayton, Louisville did remove everything from around downtown, so there is no "Over The Rhine" or "Oregon".  For Ohio citys I'm thinking Cleveland and Columbus would be maybe closer in terms of total obliteration of close-in neighborhoods via urban renewal. 

Comparing to the closest Ciny exampe, Queensgate, in this case it wasnt necessary to build Queensgate style superblocks since the blocks were already pretty big.  A lot of subsidiary streets and back alleys were removed, however.

I actually like some of the buildings here:  The Federal Building, the two public housing towers, and that brick social welfare agency low rise next to the bus station are OK. 

[Jeffrey]

I've never been to Louisville but some of those shots make it look alot like Dayton.

I thought so to, which is one reason I moved here, figureing Dayton was like Louisville.  Oops!

[Jeffrey]

Depressing!

But its such a beautiful blue sky! 

[Sherman Cahal]

I bet Sherman thinks this place is hopping.

LOL

No, I've been to Louisville many times and this is one of my least favorite aspects of the city. Jeffrey, have you checked out Park DuValle or Park Hill since they were redeveloped into something that City West is striving for? There is a new redevelopment project on the west end (I think Clarksdale?) that is one of my favorites, with a mix of townhomes and apartment units in a very dense urban setting, with sustainable features designed and constructed.

Did you venture towards the Arena? Construction was only beginning when I was last there, but Broken Sidewalk has some kickass photos of the work now progressing. And that godawful electrical tower is gone from the proposed Museum Plaza site.

[Eighth and State]

"The city centers have to come down!"

---  Le Corbusier, "City of Tomorrow"

[Jeffrey]

Jeffrey, have you checked out Park DuValle or Park Hill since they were redeveloped into something that City West is striving for?

Ive been through Park Duvalle (which is a few miles SW of this thread) and it is unrecognizable today. So far that is a very sucessfull HOPE project.

There is a new redevelopment project on the west end (I think Clarksdale?) that is one of my favorites, with a mix of townhomes and apartment units in a very dense urban setting, with sustainable features designed and constructed.

The former Clarksdale projects was in the east of downtown urban renewal zone, which will get a future thread.  I posted a pic of it in another thread here.  West of here, west of the 14th street railroad grade elevation, is the Western Cemetary park, which has a lot of infill stuff and a few remodels that is the opposite of the project-style housing in this area.

[Jeffrey]

Whats missing in all this are some before and after pix.

[SFSpike]

Just imagine what was torn down to put all that concrete up and to pave all those parking lots! I shudder to even think of it.  Luckily Louisville is still full of great buildings.

[Keith M.]

You don't want to stray from the main center of Downtown. Main St. is great and 4th St. Live is, well, it lends some life to the streets. I just can't believe such ugliness was ever considered a suitable replacement for what was there. There's a lot of work to be done, get a streetcar already!

[Jeffrey]

Not meaning to beat a dead horse or thread, since there was some interest in what was there before.

Setting the stage, the urban renewal area inside the yellow dashed line and some landmarks that we saw in the thread header. “The City of the Seventies” in 1970.  (Beecher Terrace dates to the late 1930s, though).   In this pix “north” is more or less to the right, and west is to the top.



A later pix (probably around 1974-75), with west to the right and north to the bottom of the pix.  Urban renewal area denoted by yellow dashed line, but one can see a lot of demolitions for parking outside of that, too  The old 19th century mercantile district on Main Street as a fragment in the foreground.   




The red rectangle is the north side of Jefferson Street between 7th & 8th.   Somewhere within that was this set of 1830s-40s era row houses.   A sample of what was torn down, though one suspects that things weren’t that old…but there probably were some additional antebellum survivors in the neighborhood. 



Using the Mammoth Life building as a register mark to orient one to an old pre-urban renewal view (probably taken from the Kentucky Hotel on Fith & Walnut).  One is looking west here…



….Walnut Street, AKA Muhammed Ali Boulevard,  shooting off into the West End.  The old black business district awaits the wrecking ball & bulldozer.



I guess what’s remarkable is how urban this seems, a densely built up area close in to downtown.   It’s almost like looking at a pic of the near west side of Chicago, especially the flat landscape and straight, grid streets.
 

[Jeffery]

I am getting more and more interested in my former home of Louisville.   I’ve been digging a bit in the Louisville library history collection and at the UofL library archives during my frequent returns home. 

So, here is a backstory on the pix upthread, a bit on the urban renewal effort and what came before.  I was really curious about this, so took some vacation time to go down and do some research.

First, this WPA map showing age of housing, from the 1940s.  The WPA has these for Chicago and Dayton and probably other cities, and are a snapshot of what was standing in the 1940s.  This is a great map to have as it takes the info down to the block level.



Then a close up.  The empty space is the Beecher Terrace housing project.  Notably there are blocks in this urban renewal area with the average age before 1860, so some of the older housing in the city was in this district.



Next, population.  This was from a slightly later map prepared by the planning commission.  I think each dot is 70 or 40 people.  By this time Beecher Terrace had been built.



Next, race.  This was, and had been for many years, a predominantly black neighborhood.



..and % black.  This is another WPA map.



…the saying was that urban renewal was “Negro Removal”, and we’ll see how the plans created a buffer zone between downtown and Louisville’s black ghetto.

Next, to give a flavor of the urban fabric, this amazing map prepared by the WPA in the early 1940s.  It classifies every parcel in the entire city by type of use, so is sort of land use map.  It also attempts to show parcels that have residential and commercial (black outline).  You need a magnifying glass to really study the original, so this scan of a Xerox isn’t to legible.

But the map does show the core of downtown to the right as colored black (for commercial use), but also how the surrounding neighborhoods interweave into the downtown. 



A close-up of the urban renewal area, with some landmarks mentioned.  I will be noting these as reference points as the area is transformed via urban renewal.



The map also shows how rich and varied this urban fabric might have been, how fine grained.  The Beecher Terrace property is shaded in red, but the original streets and alleys still appear on this map.

Next, a parcel map from the urban renewal project application.  This was the situation probably in 1959 or 1960.  By this time Beecher Terrace had been built.  There are some other things here, like the parcel for Central High School (the old Jim Crow black school) two blocks south. 



…and the proposed street rearrangement plan, showing new streets and streets and alleys to be vacated.



The modern parcelization, from the Louisville GIS site



….one can see how the granularity goes a away at the new parcels are larger.

Today…the urban renewal area from the air…..



And the basic concept. 



Beecher Terrace came first, perhaps setting a precedent for this area.  So the planners decided to use the western part of the urban renewal area for more public housing, “Village West”, and a rebuilt Central High.  Beyond that, along the railroad line heading to the 14th Street bridge the land was turned into an industrial district (mostly).  Broadway was to become a commercial strip, and Market Street (the northern edge of the district was also more commercial/industrial.

9th Street separates all this from the West Downtown urban renewal district, shaded in red, which is the area in the pix at the thread header.  And which we will look at in detail next.

A blow-up of the big WPA land use map, giving one the flavor on how fine-grained the urban fabric was as it shaded into downtown.   This was, in part, the oldest part of the city.  Market, Jefferson, and Liberty were part of the original town plat, which extended westward to 14th Street.  South of Liberty to Broadway was out-lots, which were subdivided during the antebellum area.  Somewhat akin to how Over The Rhine was originally the out-lots of Cincinnati.

During the antebellum era the city expanded west and east along the river, and south toward Broadway.

Even as late as  the 1940s this area was still intensely developed, with few vacant parcels.  What’s notable is that this map shows mixed use; the outlined parcels along Market denote residences above commercial or retail.  One also sees this a bit on Walnut, the old black shopping/entertainment strip



We already saw how Beecher Terrace was an early attempt at urban renewal as slum clearance for better housing.

 Beecher Terrace is shaded in red here, but the yellow shading was the proposed site for the first large scale urban renewal scheme, perhaps from the 1930s.



(certain public buildings shown for reference so one can compare how the area changes through time)

This was to be a City Beautiful influenced civic center, akin to the Group Plan of Cleveland or the Civic Center in San Francisco. 

The plan actually extended one block east towards downtown from the future West Downtown plan, and made use of the long blocks south of Liberty as landscaped mall, flanked by public buildings of various types, with two squares on either end, north and south vistas terminated by two monumental public buildings.



The north end was developed as “Jefferson Square” ,  for city, county, and state government, dominated by a new city-county building.  The old court house would become a museum.



If you look closely the flanking lawns along the central mall are really parking lots. 

The south end was developed as “Lincoln Square”, dominated by a grand US Court and Customs House, just north of the new central post office, flanked by additional Federal office buildings.



The plan shows a Telephone Building and the Courier-Journal.  These were already built, the Telephone Building was Louisvilles only art deco skyscraper.

I don’t know if this was intentional, but this plan, while providing a grand civic ensemble, also provided a barrier or cordon between the core of downtown and the black neighborhood just to the west. 

Though not executed there must’ve been some zoning intention of locating public buildings in this area as one was built pre-urban renewal, the hatched space about two blocks south of City Hall, between 6th & 7th, on this urban renwal parcel map.



…a snapshot of parcelization just before urban renewal.

In conjunction with the urban renewal effort the downtown business association, Louisville Central Area,  released Design for Downtown, the first big postwar effort to enhance downtown.  Though this plan was oriented  towards retail, hospitality, & entertainment it did make some other suggestions, like wrapping downtown and vicinity with freeways (the model was Detroit and Columbus, according to the text).



The western freeway would divide the urban renewal zone in half (in red outline), separating the more residential western half from what was intended to be a more office/civic zone to the east

The plan wasn’t as “designed” as the old group plan. Pretty much office buildings set in parking, with some residential things.




The Jefferson Square concept disappears, with the northern part of West Downtown proposed for offices and maybe light industry surrounded by (and enclosing) landscaped parking lots.  This plan shows some older buildings on Market Street (north edge of the map) being saved, but they were not. 



Lincoln Square is still there somewhat, as a landscaped forecourt to a new lozenge-shaped Federal building north of the Post Office (at the site of the group plan court and customs house).

What’s notable is this plan proposes a little residential complex south of Walnut, with rows of townhouses snaking across the property.  There might have been high rises proposed, too, but one can’t tell from this graphic



The plan shows some older buildings saved north of the Federal building.   These were proposed to be converted into offices for non-profits.  This didn’t happen and they were demolished.

As we know, a Federal building was built, as was the plaza in front of it.



“between the idea and the reality/falls the shadow”

 Housing was also built, as two high rise housing projects near the Greyhound station, and a small low rise suburban-style development roughly at the same site as the proposed residential complex.


The planners provided this map to help envision what was to come vs what was there, shading the new buildings and zoning over the existing structures. 



This is a great bit of info as one can get a flavor of the urban fabric just before it was destroyed. 

Using the above graphic as a base map, a black plan showing the spatial character of “West Downtown” (which was really “East Russell”).



One can see how this area was already substantially eroded by demolitions and parking.  But there was enough left to provide a fairly consistent street space along the east-west streets, with a fairly solid street wall on Market, north edge of the zone.

Walnut really stands out as a consistent street space continuing into downtown.  Chestnut less so once it gets closer to the post office.

The black plan doesn’t give too much idea of granularity once buildings are next to each other, so the old townhouses on Jefferson, Market and cross streets don’t show up too well. 

Next, the city transformed:

“keeper” buildings in red…





….the old fabric is removed and the new inserted around the keepers…





….resulting in solids lost is space vs defining space.  Classic figure ground reversal:





What you see in the thread header, mostly, suburban space: 




(there have been some adds and subtracts since the 1980s).

And the ghost city; retired property lines and parcels denoted by dashed line.



So what did this all look like, before it was torn down?  The U of L photograph archive has quite a few images, but they are expensive to get digitally (long story on how U of L differs from WSU in using their collection),  so a few scans of Xeroxes of Xeroxes of photos, to see maybe a grainy glimpse of a lost city.

I focus here on residential as I’m more interested in that from a vernacular architecture POV, seeing how it compares with Dayton and Cincinnati, but there are pix of churches, hotels, commercial buildings, etc, in the collection.

Nearly all of this is before 1876, probably before the Panic of 1873.  Some it is probably antebellum, from around the 1830s-1850s.

First, perhaps Louisville’s working class housing before the shotgun arrived…








Commercial building with apartments above, on either Market or Jefferson, closer to the river



Newer retail add-on to older residential, on Walnut Street.  It seems that there were a few of these on Walnut.



Fancy Oertels ’92 sign over the door. Oertels was one of Louisvilles’ three postwar beers, others being Fehrs (with it’s Fehr Bear mascot) and Falls City (have a ‘City, taste the ‘City, etc).






This is a series.  The buildings on either side of that old red brick church in the thread header.  The church today



Starting from the west, left….



(these are newer, 1880s ore later, one has that distinctive Louisville feature of chamfered corners)

…the church, roughly mid block…



…next door, and to the corner..










So one can see the possibilities of this urban renewal collection, virtually reconstructing the city. 

The church was Kentucky architect Gideon Shryrocks last work.  Across the street was one of his first.  And it survived, heavily modified, until urban renewal.

This unsual feature appears on the urban renewal map, as what looks like a rambling complex of things set in a mostly empty block.



Buried in that mass are two buildings, survivors from 1838 and 1858 respectively.  In this image, the farther one with the tower was designed & built by Shryock in 1838, but it burned and was rebuilt in 1856.   The closer one was built in 1849. 



This was University Square.  The 1838 building was the medical college, and the 1856 was the forerunner to U of L but was also Louisvilles’ first high school, the Male High School.  There was a female one elsewhere.

University Square (and its neighbors) appear on the 1876 real estate map



…and on the 1884 one.



The 1838 medical college after the 1856 rebuild…



…and, next door, the 1848 college, later Male High School.



They survived until taken by urban renewal in the 1960s. 

The replacement:



To close, a birds-eye of a portion of the West Downtown urban renewal zone, demolition nearly complete, and some features from previous maps labeled for reference.  Clear-cutting a city.



The wide-open spaces of the East Downtown urban renewal district are visible in the upper part of the image, in the background beyond the cluster of downtown buildings.

But that’s another story.

[Eighth and State]

   Thank You.

[edale]

Really tragic.

[jmecklenborg]

I have been to that Greyhound station many times so am familiar with the area.  This is a total disaster. 

[Sherman Cahal]

Heard of the western downtown freeway, but thankfully the only segment constructed was the interchange with Interstate 64. It explains why the interchange stacks to the top and not to the bottom, as it had no connection with Main Street.

[Rabbit Hash]

Thank you for this detailed account of my hometown.

[Jeffery]

Thanks.  Maybe this should be on “Urban Kentucky”.  But that would be a short board.

Since this is Urban Ohio, one can see some comparisons here with Ohio cities.  Some of this looks like the older Oregon housing in Dayton, or a bit like German Village, or short versions of the tenements of Cincinnati and Covington.   And all those Italianate buildings look like a less grand Dayton Street, maybe, in Cincy. 

There’s a definite common theme here.  2 or 2.5 stories, detached housing, rectangular or square attic windows.  Sort of a lower, low density version of Cincinnati.   But then one can see how things bulk up as you get closer to the river, like that apartment/retail example from Market Street or the rowhouses (in a previous post) on Jefferson.  It seems like Market and Jefferson might have been  a bit like Vine Street in Over The Rhine, lined with taller buildings mixing retail and housing.

The expansion of downtown combined with urban renewal nearly obliterated an entire housing typology from the city.

Heard of the western downtown freeway, but thankfully the only segment constructed was the interchange with Interstate 64. It explains why the interchange stacks to the top and not to the bottom, as it had no connection with Main Street.

Yeah, I think that four lane 9th Street that’s there now was intended as an interim solution.  And how about that crosstown route cutting across the midsection of Old Louisville.  That was a really astute siting as south of that there is more housing and north the parking lot lands ensue, so that freeway would set in concrete (literally) a sort of fuzzy boundary on the south edge of downtown.

I have been to that Greyhound station many times so am familiar with the area.  This is a total disaster.

What happened on the east side of downtown was pretty bad too, as they lost the Haymarket district, blocks of antebellum buildings, the Preston Street shtetl, the former Italian area on Pearl Street, and the old Fehr brewery.     

[Scrabble]

The 70s were a plague unto some many cities.  It's awful.

That last picture is galling.

[Vince_908]

Thanks, Jeffrey. This post is both compelling and sad. Almost every American city has one or more similar lost areas. I hope we have learned from the Urban Renewal debacle.

[GCrites80s]

Ahh, the first time I visited Louisville, I was expecting to see old men that dress like Colonel Sanders walking down tree-lined streets, drinking bourbon and taking the time to stop and admire statues of Davey Crockett and Bill Monroe. Basically, like Richmond. But instead, it just looked like a mix of Columbus and Dayton. I was shocked.

[Daytonnatian]

Great thread, Jeffery!!!

Actually, the Sinclar/west downtown area of Dayton really does have a lot in common with Disco-era Louisville you showed here......

[Jeffery]

The similarities with Louisville is why I get so pissed off at the way things are in Dayton because the rest of the city is considerably more alive than Dayton is. During this era the preservation/back-to-city movement kicked off, which became a big force in local culture during the 1970s, after all this demolition happened.  There was a concerted effort to try to save the remaining neighborhoods...the locals began to re-value the city and move back into town, which gathered steam in the 1980s and 1990s till the city now as very active and busy neighborhoods, just not next to downtown...because, well, there aint anything left next to downtown....

[TheCOV]

Uhg!!!! Looks like the Cincy Kenyon-Barr situation. It is so sad that we purposely did this to our cities.

 Now I know why Louisville never seemed to have the urbanity of other similar era river cities.  So depressing and simultaneously facinating  to look at what was.

Although I still say, no city suffered more than Minneapolis in this regard.  They lost even huge swaths of office buildings.

[Jeffery]

I don't think Louisville was ever as urban (or intensley developed) as Pittsburgh or Cincinnati, because it had a broad flat flood plain to expand over.  No topographical constraints.  The downtown also developed different, without  the dense district of high-rises.

I might do a few more Louisville posts, but not sure about that since this is supposed to be Urban Ohio...sort of off topic.

[GCrites80s]

^ Not off topic in this department.

[TheCOV]

I agree....do more.  It is waaaaayyyy on target.  Just witness the massive amount of Detroit stuff you see here at Urban Ohio.

[Sherman Cahal]

I don't think Louisville was ever as urban (or intensley developed) as Pittsburgh or Cincinnati, because it had a broad flat flood plain to expand over.  No topographical constraints.  The downtown also developed different, without  the dense district of high-rises.

I might do a few more Louisville posts, but not sure about that since this is supposed to be Urban Ohio...sort of off topic.

You are correct in that there are no topographical constraints. Louisville developed differently than say, Cincinnati, in that while Louisville's core was very dense, it was surrounded by large swaths of farms and tiny farming communities that is unlike the railroad/streetcar suburbs of Norwood, Oakley, etc. that developed more around heavy industry and wealth. The only comparable neighborhoods is something like the Highlands, which really didn't get all that developed until the 1920s and 1930s.

If you stand atop of the parking garage across from Humana and do a pano, you can count more skyscrapers and mid-rises than Cincinnati's downtown, but it is so incredibly spread out. That's because of UofL's medical campus and research park, which is next to downtown, and the hospital complexes, which are also next to downtown, but they are psychologically separated by blocks of low-rise buildings and surface lots. With Cincinnati, it's hills physically separated.

[Rabbit Hash]

^And a freeway.

Jeffery...whatever happened to your thread on the southside of Louisville?  I can't find the thread.  I am in the process of piecing together the 1913 map of Louisville into one huge file.  What history do you have on Okolona, Fairdale, so forth?

[Rabbit Hash]

^And a freeway.

Jeffery...whatever happened to your thread on the southside of Louisville?  I can't find the thread.  I am in the process of piecing together the 1913 map of Louisville into one huge file.  What history do you have on Okolona, Fairdale, so forth?

[Jeffery]

What history do you have on Okolona, Fairdale, so forth?

Here are some links for yr history requests:

Okolona

Fairdale

[Jeffery]

This post finishes- up this West Downtown story. 

Most of what I’ve posted was on the area closer to downtown, east of 9th Street.  The bulk of the West Downtown urban renewal area was west of 9th, an area that had long been a black neighborhood. 

This area already had seen some slum clearance with the Beecher Terrace public housing built around the old Baxter Square park (Baxter Square was the original Louisville graveyard)



The area also had a large new high school, Central High School, probably built in the 1950s.

The urban renewal concept would be to replace what was mostly a residential area with industrial and commercial things along the railroad embankment on the western, northern, and southern edges (more commercial along Broadway to the south) and industrial along the railroad to the west. 



The 34 acre residential component was called Village West.

Village West

The urban renewal agency approached this differently than most public housing.  They held a national design competition juried by architects and planners, led by modernist architect Ralph Rapson.

Some of the competition models, showing state of the art urban planning circa 1965-1966, the heyday of urban renewal.





The winning design was by McCullogh and Gibson (?) partnering with local firm DEGA (Design Environmental Group Architects).  The project was conceived in multiple phases.
 
Phase I of the project (1966-70) provided 263 central courtyard apartments and was awarded a citation for excellence in Community Architecture by the AIA in 1966.  Phase II (1968-1971) consisted of another 250 apartments.  Phase III (1970-72) consisted of another 102 units, an elementary school, and broad tree lined walkways that link to a shopping center and central plaza and playground, the focal point of the complex.. (Louisville Guide)

The shopping center was done-up in the New Brutalism style, with a lot of brick and concrete.  This was a popular aesthetic in Louisville at the time, used in the contemporaneous expansion of UofL.





Floor plans of the housing units. 



…blow-up



(…looks a bit like something from those UK new towns or council housing estates)

Enlargement of the Village West site plan



…compare with a modern aeriel:



And the northern part, which I think was the award winning Phase I, with a modern aeriel and the key central features…the school and shopping center…noted



So what does it look like today?  Let’s visit modern Village West, with a little help from Google & Bing.

First off, we are in Project Land.  Blocks and blocks of projects.  The red brick Village West to the north, and the older darker red brick Beecher Terrace to the south.



Driving through Project Land on Muhammed Ali Blvd (AKA Walnut Street), Beecher Terrace to the right, Village West to the left. 



Lets make a left turn into Village West…the shopping center lies ahead



As we approach we notice an EMS van with flashers going….




….oh my….




….never a dull day in the projects.



(note the old church in the background.  Individual landmark buildings were saved so it wasn’t a total urban clearcutting here)

Looking around we see a barren spot where the shopping center used to be (with one store surviving to the far left.  This was opened with great fanfare in the early 1970s but failed and was torn down



Across the street is Coleridge-Taylor Elementary School (now a Montessori school)



”…the first in Louisville to present the new educational concept of an open classroom.  This project reflected the educational planning of the time, including a circular amphitheatre around which classroom open”(Louisville Guide)



…and the empty center of Village West from the air.



One can see how the housing blocks are arranged around parking cul-de-sacs, but there is a lot of lawns and open space weaving through the complex.

On the ground it isn’t too bad with the landscaping.  The units are all in this extreme minimalist modern style, a style usually rendered in white stucco or white painted wood (a la “New York Five”), but done here in good old Louisville red brick (apparently a conscious design choice)



Looking at this and knowing it won a design award one has to ask “what where they thinking?”

Maybe about the site planning, not the architecture, which does, in retrospect, seem inspired.  By now, 40 years after construction, the landscaping has matured, giving a true parklike feel to the generous interior spaces of complex.




Looking south, the Pythian Temple popping above the roofs and Union Station towers in the far distance.  The wooden stockade fences to create yards were installed in a recent renovation project



Layering the east side of the complex are these three-stories.  Ah yes, Place Rouge.  One should note the street names for the parking cul-de-sacs are all French:  Place Rouge, Place Vert, and, of course, Place Noir.



(roofs are new, original design was flat roofs)

Back of a three-story, one can see the little patio yards created by the fencing



The View from Village West; the apotheosis of urban renewal, towers in a park, the Radiant City made real:



A few more interior pix, this one showing more of the stockade fences, in this case with little gates to get to the parking lots



Three-stories developed as longer zielenbau



And another example of sun and shade and open space weaving through the complex



Driving through here one does lose the sense of being “in the city” due to the greenery and low density.  In this case, looking west out of downtown, a low rise nursing home is to the left:



Looking east towards downtown.  One of the old landmarks saved from the wrecking ball, the Pythian Temple:

”…built as the state headquarters of the African-American Knights of Pythias Lodge…the building was a multi-use facility with a drugstore, movie theatre, and restaurant located on the ground floor. A portion of the building contained hotel rooms and apartments…”(Louisville Guide)



In the foreground perhaps a Carnegie library?   

South of the Pythian Temple was the final phase of Village West, this time in a less severe style (but equally generous landscaping).  The sloped roofs making it seem more village-y vs barrack-y.



The church in the aeriel is Quinn Chapel AME, once home to the oldest black congregation in the city;  the church itself dates to the 1880s.

The former L&N office tower visible behind these units





Could be suburbia…



At the start of this post I mentioned there was a newer high school already on-site.  This was Central High School, the old black high school from Jim Crow days.  As part of the 1970s integration plan this school was grouped with relatively new schools from the affluent, upper-middle class eastern suburbs, essentially transforming this inner city black ghetto school into a majority white “suburban” one (+/-80% white)  So there was a big enhancement of programs here.



A quick look at how urban renewal tried to suburbanize the city when it came to retail.  Broadway, the very wide street running east/west across the city, was lined with auto-oriented retail and commercial here, like fast food places.





Looking back toward downtown.  High rises of the “Magic Corner” of 4th & Broadway in the distance.



Admittedly this Broadway streetscape is pretty desolate.  Yet Village West does seem to be check the boxes. 

School and shopping within walking distance?  Check.  Work close at hand? Check (if one worked in the industrial part of the project)  Churches, playgrounds, and community facilities walkable?  Check. East-west bus lines cut across the project on Muhammed Ali, Chestnut, Jefferson, and Broadway, all leading into downtown.  The landscaping was nice, lots of open space, more than one finds in modern suburban apartment complexes.

In short this was not that bad of a development.  Which might be why it was saved.  Village West eventually deteriorated into a horizontal Pruitt Igoe.  In fact parts of it were being abandoned and boarded up.  The usual fate of such a place would be that the tenants would have been vouchered out via Section 8 and the place torn down. 

This didn’t happen. Instead this place was included in the Russell Partnership (this is part of the Russell neighborhood) and saved.



Village West was renamed City Park Vew, remodeled, and turned into a mix of market rate and affordable housing, which is what you see today. 

So that wraps up the West Downtown urban renewal story.  Sort of “The Great Society comes to the New Frontier” or something like that….a bricks (a lot of bricks) and mortar monument to 1960s idealism and modernism.

[Scrabble]

Makes me think of an alternative ending for Parkside in Dayton.  Interesting that it was saved, I'd like to learn more about the factors that contributed to the Russell Partnership. 

Great series here on Luh'vull.

[Jeffery]

^
Yeah, Parkside had good site planning too, integrated into that park with the ball fields,  and when it was first built it was walkable to shopping (that little McCook shopping center).

Russell Partnership was more than this specific project.  It involved the neighborhood to the west of here, and was a mix of things.  There is a book on it at the WSU library, by John(?) Gilderbloom, who was the UofL academic involved in it.

From the EPA smart growth page:

In 1992, a progressive collaboration involving the University of Louisville; local businesses; federal, state, and city governments; foundations; philanthropic groups; local unions; and non-profit organizations began to revitalize the neighborhood. With the help of $3.5 million in federal grants and a matching donation of $1 million from local organizations, the partnership has supported the construction or refurbishing of more than 600 homes, with hundreds more in the pipeline. They have also supplied a wide range of critical services, including child care and health care. These efforts have improved the commercial areas of the community as pawnshops, liquor stores, and taverns have been replaced by a new bookstore, a movie theater, and an African-American museum. The partnership has been successful thanks to community empowerment. For example, when the initiative began, community leaders intended to provide a range of services along with a minimal number of rental units. However, when local residents expressed the desire to own their own homes, the partnership helped establish low-interest loans and other creative financing to provide former rental tenants with affordable 30-year mortgages.

[Scrabble]

^Sounds like a uniquely Louisville development.  Most of my (admittedly limited) reading on urban renewal/urban housing has ended with a Cabrini Green-like / Section 8 kind of ending.  Interesting to think that local communities would take ownership of a project in this way.

Maybe the better question is why that development wasn't so bad in the first place since that is why it was probably saved.

[Jeffery]

I did a blog post on this:

Russsell Partnership: The Alternative to the Hollow City

Louisville Housing Authority did do a lot of demolitions. and was really agressive with HOPE redevelopments, but they saved stuff too, or converted into co-ops.  I think thats what happened to College Court, which is the oldest project in the city. 

This Village West project was an architectural dog.  I can appreciate it as being of its time, but it sucked...look at the facades...it is like a mimimum security prison.  They had to do things with it to make it work better, like the fencing, roofs, etc.  Fortunatly it did have fairly good site planning and the landscaping which softens the place.   

[Jeffery]

Looking at this I realized an interesting differnce.  The top was planned and built in the 1960s, the bottom in the late 1930s.



...you can tell the different approaches to parking.  The bottom project had less of it, and it was on-street parallel parking on internal streets"  The top project had more parking and it was developed as cul-de-sacs, akin to suburban apartment complexes, with no intnernal streets.

Maybe the older project assumed less automobility among the tenants?

[Jeffery]

You are correct in that there are no topographical constraints. Louisville developed differently than say, Cincinnati, in that while Louisville's core was very dense, it was surrounded by large swaths of farms and tiny farming communities that is unlike the railroad/streetcar suburbs of Norwood, Oakley, etc. that developed more around heavy industry and wealth. The only comparable neighborhoods is something like the Highlands, which really didn't get all that developed until the 1920s and 1930s.

If you stand atop of the parking garage across from Humana and do a pano, you can count more skyscrapers and mid-rises than Cincinnati's downtown, but it is so incredibly spread out. That's because of UofL's medical campus and research park, which is next to downtown, and the hospital complexes, which are also next to downtown, but they are psychologically separated by blocks of low-rise buildings and surface lots. With Cincinnati, it's hills physically separated.

Louisville is different.  It's so unlike Cincy and Pittsburgh.  I am going to do a few more of these explainer posts... 

[Scrabble]

^Looking forward to those Jeffery.

Obviously Pitt and Cin are different but I've associated them with each other for some reason.

[dmerkow]

To your point about the parking in the older versus newer, I'd imagine that many of the poor would not have had a car and if a family did it was likely only one car per family. It is really the shift to a car per adult that means that residential development gets way too much space devoted to parking.