In a previous field notes article, I wrote about the extensive change that the urban form of the area around the A New Vision of Health Campus has gone through over the past century. Just a handful of blocks around Muhammad Ali Boulevard changed radically, so it is worth compiling how the forces that shaped those blocks altered downtown Louisville as a whole. The primary force behind this change was urban renewal, but there is a surprisingly small amount of information online chronicling how it altered downtown’s built environment.
Slum Clearance
Urban renewal, as an official process, did not begin in much of the United States until the 1950s or 60s. For Louisville, it did not begin until 1960, but “slum clearance” was a common occurrence in American cities beginning as early as the 1930s. Slum clearance was the usual justification for urban renewal projects, so the history of urban renewal’s impact on our urban form begins there.
The primary focus of slum clearance was to remove “blight” from the city. On paper, these would be dilapidated structures that posed a risk to the health of the residents, were structurally unsound, etc. In reality, this overwhelmingly targeted black neighborhoods. A recent study indicated that black neighborhoods were twice as likely as white neighborhoods to be “cleared” due to urban blight. This same study found that rent increased after these areas were redeveloped into public housing, something that residents in Louisville would later point out. At the time, you could find op-eds, letters to the editors, and other articles in the Courier Journal reinforcing the supposed necessity of these clearings. The Journal covered a meeting of the Business Men’s Club related to slum clearance in 1934, where city Planning and Zoning Commissioner H. W. Alexander stated:
It is our principal duty now to redesign the existing development and to remodel our older residential sections, or we will have a business district surrounded by parking lots or vacant spaces
Plans for the first slum clearance project in Louisville were revealed to the public in 1934. The original scope of the project was to clear at least three blocks bounded by Jefferson to the north, Walnut (Muhammad Ali) to the south, Shelby in the east, and Clay in the west. The demolition and housing project was estimated to cost $1.5 million dollars, which would be around $35 million dollars today. Initially, the slum clearance was a bragging point as it may have been one of the first ones in the country, but the scope would change a bit as the project faced a litany of legal problems over land acquisition and was briefly canceled. After years of delays, the white-only housing project would eventually begin, though, breaking ground in December 1938 and finished within two years. The mayor at the time said “Louisville is pioneering in this work”.
The previously mentioned slum clearance project would eventually morph into what is now Liberty Green, although some of the original blocks are now part of the NuLu Yard development. Many of these slum clearance projects still exist across Louisville, with only slight changes in form or location. Beecher Terrace and Sheppard Square followed not too long after Liberty Green (called Clarksdale back then). Another example would be College Court at Seventh and Kentucky in Old Louisville, where “slums” were cleared for the new low-cost housing project. The news would only make mention of the fact the Louisville Eclipse baseball stadium once existed here, saying little of the current residents who may be displaced. Tens more slum clearance projects would take place around Louisville during the 30s, 40s, and 50s.
Urban Renewal Begins
While urban renewal did not really officially begin in Louisville until 1960, work essentially began on it in 1952. A survey was conducted on two areas: the western edge of downtown between Eighth and Twelfth and the area surrounding the “general hospital” on the eastern edge of downtown (think where the LOUMED district is today). These survey areas would become the basis for the later establishment of the downtown “renewal areas”. These were designated areas where hundreds of “slums” or “blighted buildings” would be cleared over the course of the fourteen years following 1960. Three renewal areas were established downtown: a riverfront renewal area, west downtown renewal area, and east downtown renewal area. The renewal areas would later also be referred to as Rivergate, Western-Civic Center Redevelopment Project and Medical Center Redevelopment Project respectively. The borders of these three areas in 1962 are mapped below.
While all these renewal areas will be specifically covered, there was one major component of urban renewal that was not specific to these districts and radically changed downtown: the expressway. In 1960, Louisville’s urban expressway, called the North-South Expressway, only extended from the Watterson (which did not fully wrap around Louisville yet) to Chestnut Street. By 1960, plans were in motion to expand the expressway to how we know it today.
This would have the expressway barrel through downtown and across the riverfront, an extension of the displacement already inflicted upon the often black, redlined neighborhoods it had and will continue to go through.
The North-South Expressway extension would require the demolition of 315 buildings, which contained over 300 families. The new expressway crossing the riverfront necessitated the demolition of 116 residential buildings, with 137 dwelling units in them. While not within downtown, the new “West End Expressway” (264) would destroy 814 buildings which housed 870 families, in addition to the 166 residential buildings that were needed to be demolished for the interchange for the Sherman-Minton Bridge. Given the average family size in the 1960s was 3.29 persons, the low-end estimate for displaced persons by these expressways would be around 4,846. Around 1,000 of those displaced would have lived downtown. Those numbers would only include those directly displaced, the amount displaced by indirect effects would be much harder to calculate and more numerous.
This “slum clearance” aspect of new expressways was very much intentional. It was encouraged by planners and guiding documents. A 1957 AASHO (American Association of State Highway Officials) manual reads:
Most cities have blighted areas slated for redevelopment. Where they are near general desire lines of travel, arterial routes might be located through them in coordination with slum clearance and redevelopment programs
Many of the ambitions of Urban Renewal are reflected within the 1962 planning document Design for Downtown, released by Louisville Central Area inc. This plan was never officially adopted, but gives an insight into many of the goals of local planners at the time, and many of the suggestions were actually adopted eventually, such as converting Fourth Street into a transitway (which has since been unconverted). This document includes plans for the expressways, with additions that would convert Ninth Street into an expressway that would wrap around downtown and cross to meet I-65 around where St. Catherine Street is today; this would include two big new interchanges, of course. Luckily, that part never happened, partially because it would require razing parts of Beecher Terrace which required razing of other buildings to be built in the first place.
This post will be part of an ongoing series related to urban renewal in Downtown Louisville. The next part will be uploaded on this day next week, and should be accessible below when available.
Hero image courtesy of UofL Archives and Special Collections
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