This is part of a continuing series that covers the history of urban renewal in Downtown Louisville. To see the previous article, click here.
West Downtown Renewal Area
Some kind of radical overhaul of the western downtown/eastern Russell area has been sought for a long time. The area was part of plans as far back as Harland Bartholomew’s infamous 1931 plan for Louisville. Harland Bartholomew, a man who feared blight-inducing “racial invasions”, envisioned the largely black area be transformed into a car-oriented civic center. Plans evolved as there was generally a lack of action towards creating this civic center. Bartholomew & Associates released a revision to their plans in 1957, showing a smaller civic center, but keeping its car oriented nature. This plan included the addition of the previously mentioned Ninth Street Expressway.
This plan was followed a few years later by the document Design for Downtown mentioned in the last part. This document provides a more expansive overview of what many envision for the western renewal area.
Work did eventually move beyond planning, with large-scale clearing of the area beginning in the following years. The plan was to remove 987 structures in the renewal area, half of which were by 1965. It is worth noting, though, that some significant clearance began before, such as the destruction of the historic Old National Theater at 5th and Walnut (Muhammad Ali), which was replaced by a parking lot. Entire blocks were cleared of homes and businesses, all essentially destroying what was the central businesses district of black residents in the city. Displaced residents would likely have to move west into housing projects like Beecher Terrace, creating a buffer between downtown and any large black population.
Early on, it was a major goal of urban renewal officials to convert the eastern side of the western renewal area into a “convention district”. Some work towards this did take place, such as the conversion of the Louisville Armory into a convention center in the early 1960s and the construction of a visitors center at Fifth and Muhammad Ali (the future home of the Trager MicroForest). Beyond those, plans for new public spaces and concert halls never became reality. With the convention center (Louisville Gardens) now shuttered and the visitors center gone, this district has disintegrated.
The following years would see the construction of some civic/governmental buildings, but much of what was sought after in the variety of planning documents never came to fruition. Almost none of the planned residential became a reality, at least in the townhouse form expected. Much of the park space was not built. Some significant projects were considered, like a natural history museum and a mall, but never materialized. The major legacy of this urban renewal is the destruction of a business center to create a buffer of mostly parking. Blocks that once contained tens of buildings now may only contain one or two, surrounded by surface lots.
One of the few projects to get off the ground in this new civic center was the new federal building, currently known as the Romano L Mazzoli Federal Building. Initial plans had a park space across from it, but this ended up being parking for quite a while before being converted into Martin Luther King Jr. Park. There were also plans for this building to be accompanied by two circular parking garage towers, which fell through due to high costs.
East Downtown Renewal Area
From the beginning, this renewal area was envisioned as some kind of medical district. This medical district could be considered the most “successful” of the renewal areas in that a lot of what folks envisioned actually got built in some way, and the area remains a medical district to this day. An existing concentration of medical facilities made this easier, but Batholomew sought the expansion of these facilities with new hospitals, a nurses center, rehab facilities, and, of course, parking.
Work on this renewal district was not officially approved until 1960, with the release of preliminary plans. The Board of Alderman (predecessor to Metro Council) quickly worked to get funds to survey the area. Richard Beck, the city’s urban renewal consultant, was considering clearing at least 60 acres of land in the area in August 1960. The first building would break ground the following year at the northwest corner of Floyd and Gray, an office-residential building called Medical Towers. This building would be complete in 1962 as work began on other new structures such as the Medical-Dental research building and Medical-Dental Apartments. The original Medical Towers building was demolished in 2007, but many of these structures built in the early phases of urban renewal still stand in the area.
By 1964, at least 60% of the buildings planned to be demolished had been cleared from the renewal area. As land cleared out, hospitals began planning expansions and new structures. Demand was so high, in fact, that Jack Leeth was hoping to expand to the medical district beyond its original borders. The 1962 Design for Downtown document also envisioned an enlarged medical district. The new medical center was an important part of this plan and its urban renewal component:
With urban renewal providing land acquisition, the Medical Center will dominate the East Downtown Renewal Project. Some early-stage rehabilitation is feasible, but the ultimate goal is replacement of blight by new structures, shady drives, landscaped lots, and open-space, offering a handsome approach to the CBD. Large increases in Medical Center personnel will spur this service area as a source for downtown shopping, recreation and business.
Plans for this medical center would consistently show that some kind of residential complex should be built on the north side of Walnut (Muhammad Ali). Plans for what would later be called Dosker Manor were being written up by 1966. This would become Louisville’s first high-rise public housing project, with a cost of around $3.6 million (about $35 million today). Applications opened the same year, with construction beginning in August. The first building would open in 1968.
The next big addition to this renewal area would be for the new Jefferson Community and Technical college when the city bought a property for it at First and Broadway in 1966. The urban renewal agency would sell the city multiple adjacent lots for the college to expand into, bringing a new college to the district within the next two years. In 1967, the educational footprint would expand as the urban renewal agency approved a new medical-dental complex and the Lion Eye Research Institute.
The early 70s were the late period of urban renewal in most of the country. This would see some final large-scale developments within the medical center. Important projects such as what would become the Crescent Center and the new downtown YMCA began to take shape in 1972 and 1973 respectively.
The east urban renewal area is probably the least interesting of the three. It had the least failures and saw consistent construction most of the period of urban renewal. Information on the displacement caused by construction is limited, possibly since so many were initially displaced by the extension of the North-South Expressway. Some blunders did occur, such as a failed attempt at moving the Greyhound station here instead of the west area, but these do not meet the scale of the failed developments of the riverfront renewal area which will be covered in the next part of this series.
Hero image courtesy of UofL Archives and Special Collections
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