Midwest Cities Eviscerated By Expressways & "Urban Renewal": 1950 vs. Today sliders

[MolsonExport]

wretched...I mean the replacement. Boston City Hall is awful. A blight on what is otherwise, one of my very favourite US cities.

[memph]

The Hill District doesn't look that bad in those pictures, kind of like Saint-Roch or Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Quebec City.

Back in 1940, the densest census tracts were where the Civic Arena was built, around 100,000 ppsm, with more moderate but still substantial densities along Wylie street (~50,000 ppsm, similar to East Allegheny and Central Northside at the time).

Cincinnati's densest census tract was at 81,610 ppsm in 1940, with most of the other West End and OTR census tracts at 40-65,000 ppsm.

The densest census tracts in St Louis were around 30-40k ppsm.

It's interesting because you would think the Hill District would be closer the core St Louis neighbourhoods in density. I guess St Louis, though it also had 2-3 storey row houses, had deeper back yards, and maybe an alley and a bit of a front setback?

However Cincinnati's OTR and West End seemed to have no setbacks, no alleys and small backyards but taller buildings, so I'm not sure why it wasn't denser. Did it have more light industry or something?

[ColDayMan]

^Light industry, commercial space, & lots of breweries.

[fflint]

Boston didn't lose dozens and dozens of square miles of historic urban fabric, but like New York, what it did lose was unique and incomprehensibly awesome.

I figure the buildings in the path of the Central Artery were destined to fall to the wrecking ball eventually--that's downtown Boston, after all. Ditto for much of what was Scollay Square, from which 20,000 residents were displaced to create the forgettable, brutalist Government Center.

But the wholesale destruction of the West End was not inevitable, and remains an egregious wound that can never be healed. There was nowhere in the US quite like it. Whereas Philadelphia was plotted out in a very non-English grid, Boston was from the start a dense, organic, unplanned, gangly mess akin to the patterns and forms of other English cities. It would have been better to retain more of that urban fabric, since nobody anywhere builds cities like that anymore.

[nei]

Originally Posted by fflint

But the wholesale destruction of the West End was not inevitable, and remains an egregious wound that can never be healed. There was nowhere in the US quite like it. Whereas Philadelphia was plotted out in a very non-English grid, Boston was from the start a dense, organic, unplanned, gangly mess akin to the patterns and forms of other English cities. It would have been better to retain more of that urban fabric, since nobody anywhere builds cities like that anymore.

To be a bit pedantic, yes there is. In the nearby North End. From photos, it looks like the West End was very similar to the North End except maybe somewhat less dense

[fflint]

Originally Posted by nei

To be a bit pedantic, yes there is. In the nearby North End. From photos, it looks like the West End was very similar to the North End except maybe somewhat less dense

The context of my statement was in comparison with other contemporary (and subsequent) US cityscapes, but you're right. The areas near the West End were like the West End.

[CCs77]

Originally Posted by memph

The Hill District doesn't look that bad in those pictures, kind of like Saint-Roch or Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Quebec City.

Back in 1940, the densest census tracts were where the Civic Arena was built, around 100,000 ppsm, with more moderate but still substantial densities along Wylie street (~50,000 ppsm, similar to East Allegheny and Central Northside at the time).

Cincinnati's densest census tract was at 81,610 ppsm in 1940, with most of the other West End and OTR census tracts at 40-65,000 ppsm.

The densest census tracts in St Louis were around 30-40k ppsm.

It's interesting because you would think the Hill District would be closer the core St Louis neighbourhoods in density. I guess St Louis, though it also had 2-3 storey row houses, had deeper back yards, and maybe an alley and a bit of a front setback?

However Cincinnati's OTR and West End seemed to have no setbacks, no alleys and small backyards but taller buildings, so I'm not sure why it wasn't denser. Did it have more light industry or something?

I don't if it is what happened there, but many times a difference in density in an apparently similar building environment is because of the differences of crowding.

Take for example Manhattan. It peaked in 1910 with 2.3 million vs 1.6 million today, 30 % less than in 1910 or more than 40% more in 1910 than today. Yet, if you look at a picture in Manhattan in 1910 vs one of today, you will see than in 1910 there where many less highrises than there are today, and today there should be many more housing units than there were in 1910 , still the population is largely less. That was because the city was much more crowded back then. The exact same tenenment house that today may have 15 people living in it, may have one hundred back then.

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by CCs77

I don't if it is what happened there, but many times a difference in density in an apparently similar building environment is because of the differences of crowding.

Take for example Manhattan. It peaked in 1910 with 2.3 million vs 1.6 million today, 30 % less than in 1910 or more than 40% more in 1910 than today. Yet, if you look at a picture in Manhattan in 1910 vs one of today, you will see than in 1910 there where many less highrises than there are today, and today there should be many more housing units than there were in 1910 , still the population is largely less. That was because the city was much more crowded back then. The exact same tenenment house that today may have 15 people living in it, may have one hundred back then.

Right. Huge family sizes make all the difference in population density.

[DenseCityPlease]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Boston City Hall is awful. A blight on what is otherwise, one of my very favourite US cities.

I'm the first one to agree that the demolition of large chunks of historic urban fabric in central Boston was a national tragedy.

But, setting that issue aside, Boston City Hall is a late midcentury architectural masterpiece and surely one of the two or three best examples of brutalism on the North American continent. It's a physical embodiment of the social and intellectual zeitgeist of the era in which it was built. For anyone educated in art, architecture, history, urban planning, or politics the building is an important landmark. The fact that you personally find it ugly doesn't change this central truth.

Ironically, proud ignorance of the value of historic architecture is what led to the construction of this building in the first place, and the demolition of the historic neighborhood that once stood in its place. I see little difference between your mentality and the mentality of those who built the freeways 60 years ago...

[mhays]

Capturing the zeitgeist of a short, misguided era is a terrible reason to keep an ugly, dysfunctional building.

[DenseCityPlease]

Originally Posted by mhays

Capturing the zeitgeist of a short, misguided era is a terrible reason to keep an ugly, dysfunctional building.

Well sir, Robert Moses probably couldn't have said it better himself. Boy if you folks were alive when the West End was being cleared you would have been driving the bulldozers. Or at least cheering on the sidelines with the masses in the name of "progress".

I hate to say it, but the architectural illiteracy on this forum is astonishing. And on a thread devoted specifically to the pitfalls of historic destruction of our built environment. Talk about irony.

[heyerdahl]

Now available for cities in the Southeast as well:

http://iqc.ou.edu/2014/12/18/60yrssoutheast/

[memph]

Originally Posted by DenseCityPlease

Well sir, Robert Moses probably couldn't have said it better himself. Boy if you folks were alive when the West End was being cleared you would have been driving the bulldozers. Or at least cheering on the sidelines with the masses in the name of "progress".

I hate to say it, but the architectural illiteracy on this forum is astonishing. And on a thread devoted specifically to the pitfalls of historic destruction of our built environment. Talk about irony.

I thought the masses (locals) were opposed to the demolition of the West End and that Government Center was never particularly well liked by locals?

You're not the first person to make an argument like this, something along the lines of "back in the urban renewal days, people felt the same about older (ex Victorian) architectural styles as you do about modern (especially Brutalist) architecture today".

Except I'm not convinced that the general public felt that way about earlier architectural styles. The architectural, planning and government elite felt that way about 18th/19th century architecture, but the general public? The general public might have had issues with the poverty, crowding, and sometimes unsanitary conditions that existed in some of these neighbourhoods, and maybe even the built density. However, I have very strong doubts they had issues about the architecture, considering how many colonial revival homes were being built at the time.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by DenseCityPlease

I hate to say it, but the architectural illiteracy on this forum is astonishing. And on a thread devoted specifically to the pitfalls of historic destruction of our built environment. Talk about irony.

The thing is, most of our judgements are coming from an urbanism perspective rather than an architectural one. And to that end, however you might feel about the aesthetic or cultural value of brutalism (or modernism in general), its willful disregard of the human scale and urban context makes the entire movement a total failure in that respect. Boston's City Hall would be excellent as a standalone piece of sculpture. But it's not. It's a piece of the wider urban realm, and within that context it just doesn't work.

That said, acknowledging that doesn't mean the solution is to demolish it - and no one seems to have made any sort of claim to suggest that.

[Minato Ku]

Originally Posted by heyerdahl

Now available for cities in the Southeast as well:

http://iqc.ou.edu/2014/12/18/60yrssoutheast/

Except for the last cities (Memphis, Nashville, Louisville and Jacksonville), this is less sad than Midwest cities.
The core of New Orleans was quite well conserved.
Atlanta and Miami were rather unimpressive back then.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Minato Ku

this is less sad than Midwest cities.

yes. with some notable exceptions like new orleans, southeast city cores were generally not as intensely developed as their midwest counterparts in the pre-war era. so when the post-war wrecking ball came swinging around, their was simply less to lose.

[fflint]

Boston City Hall is a crime against the very concept of fine-grained urbanity, which is what many of us on this forum value much more than 'capturing the zeitgeist' of a short-lived architectural fad.

City Hall functions poorly within its context, a bunker on a giant super-block that disrupts the historic street patterns. It meets both Congress Street and the windswept, lifeless, oversized plaza in which it sits like an alien mothership with high, blank walls. It casts deep winter shadows on Faneuil Hall nearby.

The city would be better off if Boston City Hall were demolished and the old pathways restored. And I do believe someday it will happen.

Anyway, we've probably spent enough time on Boston in this thread.

[Dr Nevergold]

Why is modern or international architecture so hated? There isn't any new construction of it, and the building designs are ones I actually have come to like. It represents an era where lines and simplified shapes became more important than the fine detail. It signified a major change.

There's value in that type of architecture, and I rather enjoy the Boston City Hall. If you destroy it, it'll destroy that history just like other history that has been lost in the more distant past. Wishing for Boston City Hall to come down is no more different of a mistake than the modernists who wanted to hull out older city buildings to build this modernist architecture.

I say keep it, preserve it, and build around it elsewhere.

[memph]

Originally Posted by CCs77

I don't if it is what happened there, but many times a difference in density in an apparently similar building environment is because of the differences of crowding.

Take for example Manhattan. It peaked in 1910 with 2.3 million vs 1.6 million today, 30 % less than in 1910 or more than 40% more in 1910 than today. Yet, if you look at a picture in Manhattan in 1910 vs one of today, you will see than in 1910 there where many less highrises than there are today, and today there should be many more housing units than there were in 1910 , still the population is largely less. That was because the city was much more crowded back then. The exact same tenenment house that today may have 15 people living in it, may have one hundred back then.

Sure, I'm not surprised that some of these neighbourhoods were denser than similar (intact) neighbourhoods today, I was just surprised about how much of a difference there was between cities at that time (1940). So do you think St Louis was less crowded than Pittsburgh in those days? Or was the difference more to do with St Louis having deeper lots? Or did St Louis' densest neighbourhoods have more industrial/commercial space than Pittsburgh's?

[fflint]

Originally Posted by Dr Nevergold

Wishing for Boston City Hall to come down is no more different of a mistake than the modernists who wanted to hull out older city buildings to build this modernist architecture.

1. Because everything old is deemed obsolete, we shall tear everything old down, despite fierce opposition from those living and working in these old areas, and replace the fine-grained urbanity with brutalist superblocks and a massive, inward-focused bunker on an oversized, empty plaza.

2. Because this single use, anti-urban bunker-on-a-superblock disrupts the city's historic and organic pathways right in the heart of downtown, meets the street and empty plaza with hostile blank walls, is a drafty and gloomy maze hated by workers and visitors alike, and alienates the general public, this parcel should be redeveloped to be more functional, fined-grained, harmonious and less hostile to the rest of the heart of downtown Boston.

You think both sentiments are equally mistaken?