JW DRAFT LAYOUT

September 2 2003

URBAN RENEWAL IN THE MODEL CITY

William G. Holt
University of Connecticut
Donald F. Celmer

William G. Holt is Visiting Lecturer in Sociology at the University of

Connecticut. He is an urban planner who worked with the National Capital
Planning Commission in Washington, D.C. and Central Atlanta Progress on
the 1996 Summer Olympics.

Donald F. Celmer is Ret. Lieutenant with the New Haven Police

Department. A graduate of the University of New Haven, he served as a
Fellow with the Yale Child Study Institute.

Note: The authors would like to thank Ryan Monihan for his assistance
with photography and Amy Trout, Archives Curator with the New Haven
Colony Historical Society.
photo essay william holt an donald celmer

urban renewal in the model city

As World War II ended, New Haven fell on hard times. The city’s industrial base had eroded
during the Depession and received only a fitful stimulus from the war economy. People and
resources were leaving for the suburbs and the idea took hold that New Haven and other
American cities were dying. Goaded by this specter of urban decline, the federal government
created a cluster of post-war programs to foster “urban renewal.” It identified New Haven as
a model city for implementing these programs and the New Haven Redevelopment Agency
(NHRA) as a model of local leadership.

The NHRA faced substantial challenges and its naiveté created additional problems. The G.I. Bill
subsidized veterans to buy homes, but New Haven had few homes to offer. Instead, many first-
time buyers found more attractive options in the suburbs. The Eisenhower Interstate Highway
Act of 1956 made the urban exodus even easier for would-be commuters. In hopes of making the
city the auto traffic hub between New York City and New England, boosters lobbied to place the
intersection of highways I-95 and I-91 in downtown New Haven. Efforts to replace a patchwork
street grid with large, single-use blocks served by modern utilities and highways did not lure large
businesses back to the city, but did displace New Haven residents and small businesses. Indeed,
b Between 1949 and 1962, the NHRA eliminated 6,500 housing units, many occupied by low-
income Italian Americans, and replaced just 951. Similar outcomes in other cities earned urban
renewal the nickname, “urban removal” or, in some places, “Negro removal.”

Many civic leaders, planners, and architects working in the 1950s and 60s considered
the post-war suburbs, with their modern architecture, superhighways and mega-malls, the
communities of the future. Often, they regarded the people left behind in the city as ne’er-do-
wells and deviants who lacked motivation to improve their lot. Consistent with this view, they
also saw complex, multiuse urban neighborhoods and their mix of older buildings, small streets,
ethnic enclaves and local shops as old-fashioned, inefficient and disorganized.

As some local residents realized they could fight city hall and win, conflicts between advocates of
urban redevelopment and local residents sprang up across the United States. Inspired by victories
in New York and San Francisco, working-class residents in New Haven’s Fair Haven section
fought to preserve their own communities and neighborhoods. These and other struggles helped
define urban renewal as a continuing contest over how cities should look—not only to those who
plan and govern them, but to residents who call them home.

Note: The authors would like to thank Ryan Monaghan for his assistance with
photography and Amy Trout, Museum Curator with the New Haven Colony Historical Society.
Brownstones built in the late 1800s were common along New Haven’s Route 34 corridor before urban
renewal replaced them with a multi-lane highway, several large high rises, and a coliseum complex that is
currently unused and in disrepair.
selling the need for redevelopment
To receive federal urban renewal funds, the NHRA first had to confirm that areas of New Haven were
slums that needed to be demolished. The NHRA used photographs to help make their case. Some of these
propaganda photos were staged. Others were captioned to support the desired claim, whether or not it was
true. All photos on these two pages courtesy of the New Haven Colony Historical Society.

The NHRA caption on the back of the photo to the

right notes that the man on the stoop was “obviously
out of work and waiting for the bar to open.” Agency
notes also criticized the mixed use of a bar, a gym
and housing in the same building. The NHRA staged
the photo below, adding assorted junk to the yard and
asking the subject to pose with the laundry. Because
many working-class neighborhoods appeared too clean,
arranging trash to good effect was a routine feature of
the agency’s ”photo-documentation” efforts.
The NHRA scripted these two photos to
emphasize the value of redeveloped housing to
local residents. The woman scowling in her old
decrepit home (right) is transformed into the same
woman—with the same table—smiling in her new
modern apartment (above).
roads and ruins
Urban redevelopers in New Haven and many other cities embraced the idea of using the interstate
highway system to revive decaying downtowns. They hoped that easier access would make downtown
New Haven profitable for high-end department stores and other retail businesses. But the only
replacement for an existing Edward Malley & Co. store was a Macy’s that has since closed. Instead of
bringing life into the city, the new highways frequently took it away—accelerating the urban exodus,
fragmenting neighborhoods, and further depleting city centers of amenities and social life.

A centerpiece of the NHRA redevelopment

plan, this new highway (Route 34) went
only three miles, stopping just short of an
area where homes had been destroyed while
building it. Appropriately, the city named the
road the Mayor Richard Lee Expressway after
redevelopment’s greatest local champion. It
now dead-ends at the Yale-New Haven Hospital
parking garage (right). The blocks leading up to
this single-use terminus serve as surface parking
for the hospital and Yale Medical School.
New Haven residents had numerous
downtown shopping options during the
1959 Christmas season (above). In 2003,
the Chapel Square Mall (left) that replaced
the old retail core sits empty while waiting
yet another redevelopment plan.
residents, protests and planners
Urban redevelopment has typically been shaped more by urban elites than by local residents. As New Haven
residents asserted their claims, frustrations mounted on both sides. Some citizen groups blamed Yale University,
especially its architecture school, for promoting experimental designs that attended less to neighborhood needs
than to the university’s own interests. Across the United States, similar conflicts emerged as redevelopment
advocates were confronted by local residents fighting to preserve their way of life in even the most poor and
deteriorating areas of the city. All photos on these two pages courtesy of the New Haven Colony Historical
Society.

This 1972 protest occurred towards the end of urban renewal initiatives in New Haven when residents
of Fair Haven, the last of the city’s urban renewal neighborhoods, organized against redevelopment.
Urban renewal as “urban removal.” When these federal-style homes from the early 1800s were
destroyed in developing the Route 34 corridor, low-income residents were forced to move
elsewhere. High rises constructed in the same area now house many Yale graduate and medical
school students.