Transcript from the portion of the PBS documentary "Divided Highways" which was shown in class
running time of this segment: 7 minutes, 24 sec.
GRIGGS: We were supposed to go through the least expensive land because land was avery high part of that cost. So we would go through swamps, the least expensive land. If wewere in an urban environment we would go through the slums because that was the leastexpensive land. Those people didn't see to have a political voice at the time. So we were trained,maybe not told specifically to do it, but we wee trained right to build the least expensive road to service the most people.
NARRATION: As highways invaded the cities, whole neighborhoods disappeared. In the 1950s, the Schuylkill Expressway slashed through hundreds of acres of park land in orderto dump thousands of cars onto the congested streets of Philadelphia. In the 1960s,bulldozers leveled 5000 homes to make way for Interstate 5 through Seattle.
LEE: The interstate highway system and the urban renewal program almost wenttogether hand-in-glove. There was this sort of pristine, almost modernist image which plannersand architects had bought completely into at the time. There was the idea that you would flyabout on these overhead highways and then the cities would be these pristine, clean high risetowers that were serviced primarily by automobiles. They didn't do very much on the grounds interms of people walking in neighborhoods and all of that. But the combination of clearance forhighway construction and urban renewal torn down more housing in the cities than they ever builtthrough any of the public housing programs.
JONATHAN GIFFORD, ENGINEER: As a highway system is designed for long distant intercitytraffic has to have high design speeds. You got to be able to accommodate large trucks at highspeeds on wet pavements so you need large, sweeping curves. You need long acceleration lanes.In urban areas there are things on the ground that matter to people and when you want to put through a highway that can accommodate 50 or 60 or 70 mile an hour traffic you've got to clearout all of that stuff and every single thing that you move often carries with it a human story aboutpeople who are going to be displaced or whose ancestors owned or operated something. So, the impacts on the urban areas were tremendous.
SMITH: Where is the freeway going to go when it gets to these major cities? Even where there isa bypass something brings you into town. What neighborhoods will you cut through? It won't be the ones where the wealthiest people live.
IVINS: Just you go back and check in any number of towns, they laid the interstate down right onthe Black/White line, bam. And what that meant was that it would be much harder to have schoolintegration. I mean you couldn't have kids walkin' across the interstate for heaven sakes
NARRATION: Planners had an uncanny ability to pick out the black neighborhoods. In St. Petersburg, Florida, ten African-American churches were picked up and moved tomake room for I-275. The route for I-94 in St. Paul displaced one in seven of the city'sblack residents. Very few blacks were living in Minnesota, one critic noted, but the roadbuilders found them. The road-builders also found Overtown, in Miami.
T. WILLARD FAIR, MIAMI URBAN LEAGUE: When I first came here some 30 years agoOvertown was the hub of black business, black civic life, black professional life, blackentertainment and it was the place where everybody of color wanted to be. Street life wasexciting. Street life was dynamic. Restaurants were filled with people. People were standing onthe corners. Children were running and playing. It was simply a vibrant, exciting place to be.
NARRATION: In 1957 Florida highway officials announced a new project: an elevatedsection of Interstate 95 that would cut through the heart of Overtown. The thirty-day eviction notices started arriving in early 1960; over the next eight years, 30,000 of theneighborhood's 40,000 residents moved away.
JESSE MCRARY, ATTORNEY: What happened to Overtown was what I call a political driveby shooting and killing of a vibrant community. You have to understand that at the timeOvertown was killed, smothered, that blacks had no political power. It was killed. Without anyconcern of those who were political powers at the time to save that community as a part of thelarger, greater Miami community.
FAIR: The Overtown community did not fight back because I think that the Wall streetpackaging of the product said that things are going to get better. That if you are to be relocated, you will be relocated into better housing. That by the coming of the expressway this is a sign of progress.
MCCRARY: There's as many 16 wheelers on I-95 at this intersection as you have taxes in NewYork City. You can't run a business of any kind with that kind of vehicular traffic over your head. Everyday, all day, twenty-four hours a day.
LEE: No place else in the world do you find the downtowns or the core areas of the city as theleast desirable places to live. You go to Paris, you go to Barcelona, you go anywhere else in the world and it is the in town living, adjacent to the cultural facilities, adjacent to the central business districts, that are the most desirable locations in which to live.
MCCRARY: Overtown has nothing. It is a skeleton. I dare say that if you road Northwest 2nd Avenue today, and really shot a cannon, you'd have very little chance of actually hitting somebody.
JOSEPH ALIOTO, FORMER MAYOR SAN FRANCISCO: You have to understand the spirit of the highway lobby or the highway mob as we used to call them. They protected that highwayfund as though it was some kind of sacred fund they were determined to use it regardless of the thing. That fanaticism. It was the kind of fanaticism had anybody suggested we might have saveda block or two on the way to the Sistine Chapel. They'd a built a highway or a freeway right through the Vatican.
NARRATION: In New Orleans there were plans to place a freeway around the FrenchQuarter; in New York, engineers plotted an expressway through the Bronx; in San Francisco, the state highway department sited an interstate in the heart of downtown.
ALIOTO: The Lt. Governor under Ronald Reagan came down to see me when I was mayor andhe said "we have a freeway along your Embarcadero but it's cut off at a certain point and we wantyour permission now to complete the freeway all the way, one block off Fisherman's Wharf, outto the Marina Green so it connects with the Golden Gate Bridge". I said you guys are kidding. Isaid look you fanatics, you don't mean this do you? He said, "Yeh we do." Well there is nochance we are going to let you close the streets to do this so you can forget that.
NARRATION: San Francisco did stop that freeway extension, but the highway battle withthe most striking outcome took place in Boston -- a city with a history of big highwayprojects. In the early fifties, Boston created the Central Artery, a huge elevated highwaythat cast a dark shadow over much of the landscape. At the same time, they extended thestate turnpike into the city itself.
FRED SALVUCCI, TRANSPORTATION PLANNER: In 1959 my grandmother lived in NorthBrighton next to the railroad tracks. The turnpike authority decided to extend the Mass Pike intoBoston and they really treated everybody in those neighborhoods in a despicable manner. Theycame out in September. They knocked on the door of this Italian immigrant widow, 70 years old,didn't speak English, gave her a dollar and said the house is ours you gotta move. And when weget around to it we'll give you an appraisal and let you know what we're willing to give you.
NARRATION: The turnpike was extended, thousands of people lost their homes. But themaster plan called for more: a 500-million dollar, eight-lane circular route called the InnerBelt, that would cut through thirteen different neighborhoods. In the mid-1960s, the statebegan destroying houses along the route.