26
From the Ground Up
The transfer of the neighborhood from the working class to the poor who live here today followed on the postwar growth of the city’s suburbs and the construction of highways through the downtown— that common chapter in the life of the American city. The second chapter, in the form of urban renewal, arrived in 1964 as Syracuse readied itself for a future that would never come, sweeping away large swaths of the industrial- and business-district fabric that would remain vacant for decades. In the Near Westside, this double blow came in a milder form. Highway ramps turned the neighborhood’s western boundary into a barrier, and the insertion of two public-housing projects under the General Neighborhood Renewal Plan removed five blocks of single-family houses and two street segments, both disturbing the scale of the neighborhood fabric. On the other hand, the neighborhood was spared the more sweeping depredations of “slum clearance,” retaining much of its original street pattern, infrastructure, and housing stock. Its factory buildings, now empty, remained.
Fig. 3. Abandoned Kennedy Square Housing development, Syracuse, New York; completed c. 1975, closed 2008
Syracuse public housing from the urban renewal years is typical and largely unexceptional. There were two rather beautiful and innovative projects—both demolished in recent years—that evoked the idealism of the Great Society and the architect’s aspirations to achieve something better for society’s poor (fig. 3). More common were brick-clad slabs and towers set on large lawns. The Near Westside had four cross-axial towers. In these the relationship between work, community life, and dwelling was critically severed. Any capital development that might foster jobs would happen elsewhere; the housing, meanwhile, provided affordable rents in decent buildings, but in this severed landscape, the tenants had few communal or personal resources to redress their poverty, even on an ad hoc basis. The housing became little more than barracks. Today the Near Westside appears rather more interesting. With a population of 2,200, it is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. Half of its residents live below the poverty line, and some 37 percent are disabled. It has more than its share of crime. But unlike postwar suburbs and projects of the 1960s, it maintains a healthy infrastructure of services, and everyday needs are still met within its boundaries. It has the city’s only remaining privately owned supermarket, and there are a smattering of other shops, bars, several churches, and a health clinic. A short walk under the underpass leads to Armory Square, and a small mall occupies an old industrial ground. There are also a good number of large and small green spaces, ballparks,