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There were 6 department stores at one time on Fayetteville St in downtown Raleigh. They began closing in 1956. As mentioned above by rnc2mbfl, a shopping center opened 3 miles west in 1949 (supposedly the first of its kind between DC and Atlanta), and stole the energy. The last department store closed in the mid-90s, by which time Raleigh’s center of gravity had moved miles north as the city grew out towards the Research Triangle Park.
It’s only in the last 15 years that downtown has re-emerged as something beyond an employment hub. The former derelict warehouse section has become ground zero for the revitalization. Funny enough though, the former main business thoroughfare Fayetteville St is lagging behind other areas of downtown. Less residential more office there, so I guess retail and restaurants are flocking to where people live. And for the first time since perhaps before the war, the downtown population is growing and not simply bleeding out to the suburbs.
There were 6 department stores at one time on Fayetteville St in downtown Raleigh. They began closing in 1956. As mentioned above by rnc2mbfl, a shopping center opened 3 miles west in 1949 (supposedly the first of its kind between DC and Atlanta), and stole the energy. The last department store closed in the mid-90s, by which time Raleigh’s center of gravity had moved miles north as the city grew out towards the Research Triangle Park.
It’s only in the last 15 years that downtown has re-emerged as something beyond an employment hub. The former derelict warehouse section has become ground zero for the revitalization. Funny enough though, the former main business thoroughfare Fayetteville St is lagging behind other areas of downtown. Less residential more office there, so I guess retail and restaurants are flocking to where people live. And for the first time since perhaps before the war, the downtown population is growing and not simply bleeding out to the suburbs.
Just one point of clarification, Cameron Village (now The Village District) is less than 1.5 miles as the crow flies from the Capitol Building in the very center of the city. That's just how small Raleigh was back in 1949.
As for your comment on about current growth downtown, nearly 3500 housing units have been completed downtown since 2015 (doubling inventory in 7 years) with another 5000 either under construction or planned. As a reference, downtown Raleigh proper is barely a square mile.
My grandpa grew up in St. Louis in the 40s. He always commented before he passed that the city felt so empty in comparison to the old days. By 1950 most legacy cities were busting at the seams and extremely crowded by today's standard. A lot of the reason the old cities lost so much population (outside deindustrialization and white flight) was that there simply wasn't enough housing after WWII. Instead of going big on transit infrastructure and denser housing, America went big on highways and suburbanization.
Exactly right. I grew up in St. Louis in the 1950s and the influx of people driving personal cars to work choked the roads and required huge downtown parking lots. The post-war housing shortage drove families to suburbs where land was cheap, and developers were cranking out subdivisions in what was prime farmland. These families needed freeways/interstates to get to work where they would park in a lot that used to be a business establishment. Public transit and walkability were sacrificed.
St. Louis was on the Mississippi River, so the interstates all had to converge to where the bridges were, which further isolated the downtown area.
Nashville had two downtown department stores. each omr 5-6 stories high.
Actually, Nashville had three large downtown department stores, each 5-6 stories and covering entire city blocks: Cain-Sloan, Castner-Knott, and Harvey's. Cain-Sloan and Caster-Knott kept their downtown stores all the way into the 1990s while Harvey's closed in the 80s. Nashville also had a very impressive and dense network of streetcars just prior to WW2: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EwdArPfW8AAvWns.jpg
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its - possession
it's - contraction of it is
your - possession
you're - contraction of you are
their - possession
they're - contraction of they are
there - referring to a place
loose - opposite of tight
lose - opposite of win
who's - contraction of who is
whose - possession
alot - NOT A WORD
Which downtown? Albuquerque had 35,000 people in 1940 (in living memory) but that was quite large for the sleepy, sunny southwest at that time. It has "Old Town" with the plaza and the oldest adobe buildings and the main (1793) church. "New Town" grew up near the railroad station and depot in the 1880s. Later commercial development grew up along the Route 66 corridor -- both north and south (old) Route 66 along 4th street and the (new) east and west Route 66 along Central Avenue. The University of New Mexico is off of Central Avenue and has its own development history. Now there is an "uptown" district located further east. With the dispersed commercial development, a person could (and many do) live in one area and never have to venture out into a different "downtown". The city has expanded west across the Rio Grande but that has not developed a commercial center other than suburban-style strip malls. The main CBD developed between newtown and oldtown, but it has to compete with the other developed commercial areas and struggles with homelessness, traffic, and petty crime. There are some very nice pre-WW2 buildings in the CBD but many were sacrificed to urban renewal. You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
Of course. The ones that were around and developed were plenty urban in design.
Jacksonville is pretty awful when it comes to urbanity but back in the first half to the 20th century it was extremely dense, walkable and vibrant.
I repeat this statistic often in these forums. Jacksonville's streetcar system was 61 miles long and carried 20 Million passengers per year in 1930. And while it's hard to get an exact number on this (depends how you define downtown) the DT Jax population in the 1930s-50s was somewhere between 5 and 10 x larger than it is now. The urban core (when you include all the adjacent streetcar suburbs) was about 4 x larger in population than it is now.
In the end, all cities in the USA grew in the suburban model post WW2. It's just that the Sunbelt experienced way more growth post war than those in the industrial North and Midwest. This results in more of the Sunbelt cities being suburban in format. At the same time that the Sunbelt grew post war, many of those cities were really small during the war. Phoenix was just 65K in 1940! Two words about what changed the conversation: Air Conditioning.
I don't know the history of Charlotte's downtown(uptown) but I will be the first to admit, that it is far more bustling than one would imagine. It also has street cars, and a light rail.
Yes however it could be so much more if it wasn't for urban renewal happening from the late 40s to the 60s ending with the destruction of Beooklyn Village. Look at old photos of uptown and the surrounding core from the 1910s up until the 1960s and now imagine that with today's development...it would be AMAZING..
Yes however it could be so much more if it wasn't for urban renewal happening from the late 40s to the 60s ending with the destruction of Beooklyn Village. Look at old photos of uptown and the surrounding core from the 1910s up until the 1960s and now imagine that with today's development...it would be AMAZING..
It's depressing to look at old photos of American cities and see all of the stuff that demolished in the name of urban renewal and particularly freeway construction.
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