Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
September 2 2003
William G. Holt
University of Connecticut
Donald F. Celmer
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
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.
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.