Urban lipstick on the suburban pig.

In the large American cities that lack a robust public transportation system—which is most of them—we justifiably celebrate every minor victory toward shifting development away from auto-centrism.  Mid-sized cities in the Midwest and South seem to be among the most susceptible: most of them have a “Midtown” district that predates the automobile.  If it is already on the affluent side of town, this district probably hosts some of the city’s best historic architecture, all remnants from the time when it was a fashionable commercial hub.  At this same time, the aforementioned architecture in these Midtowns has struggled from a period of neglect and perceived obsolescence during the peak of decentralization to more auto-oriented suburbs.

These days, many Midtowns are patchy at best, with parking lots interspersed to serve the surviving old buildings, juxtaposed with some more recently constructed retail structures that serve both the neighborhoods’ residents, as well as commuters zooming down these streets on their way to the fashionable suburbs several miles out where they live.  Those new structures don’t fit in, not only because they eschew high-quality brick or limestone materials, but because they are often identical to the same structures those commuters would find in the hinterlands where they live: drive-through fast-food restaurants, drug stores, or automotive service centers.  There’s nothing wrong having them in urban settings: at the peak of decentralization, city leaders were no doubt happy to have investors in their struggling Midtowns and welcomed the construction, regardless of how incompatible it was with the older neighborhood buildings.  After all, transportation in private vehicles were the way of things, and these old districts had to adapt.

But, more often than not, the Midtowns also boast classically walkable street grids, high-quality older housing, and mature tree canopies.  They are sometimes a quick bus ride or even bicycle ride from downtown.  And they are hip again.  As a new generation of urban admirers has begun to rebel against the still-dominant suburban archetype, many advocates have tried straddling between the ideological extremes of either blocking all incompatible infill development or permitting anything and everything for the sake of bolstering the tax base.  The result of this push-and-pull manifests itself in a variation of a classic old form: the pseudo-urban infill, like this Chick-fil-A in Birmingham, Alabama from the photo below.

It sits at a prominent intersection in the city’s Five Points South neighborhood, about a mile from downtown and one of the more popular destinations in the metro for pedestrian-oriented nightlife.  Just a block from the Chick-fil-A is the heart of the neighborhood, characterized by its unusual intersection and the wonderfully surreal Storyteller Fountain.

What distinguishes the Chick-fil-A in this first photograph from the freestanding buildings in the suburbs?  The biggest feature I can detect is the placement of the building in relation to the parcel: it more or less stands flush with the property line.  (I say “more or less” because there does appear to a bit of gap between the building and the sidewalk, presumably reserved for outdoor seating or bicycle parking.)  A pedestrian can approach the building’s entrance directly from the sidewalk, without having to walk in the path of a vehicle.

In addition, looking at the side of the building, it does not appear to offer a drive-thru window.

Instead, this Chick-fil-A features a parking lot that abuts a sleek “arcade” along a widened, landscaped sidewalk, exactly where a drive-thru lane would normally cut across in join with the street.  These two modifications might seem modest, but the site plan for this storefront would contrast significantly with the typical suburban configuration, which would include multiple rows of off-street parking in front of the structure, thereby forcing the building far from the street.

It might not seem like a dramatic gesture, but, barring the necessary zoning regulations, it is extremely difficult to effect this sort of change in typology for a typically suburban, automobile-oriented establishment.  And Birmingham does not have the regulations in place, at least not here at Five Points South.  A review of the city’s Zoning Ordinance and Zoning Map places this part of town in the B-3 Community Business District zone.  Buildings within the district have no true minimum front, side, or rear yard regulations, meaning that setbacks are not required—unless a parcel sits next a lot in a different zoning district that regulates dwellings, a building in B-3 can bump up right against the lot line.  Meanwhile, the rules in Zone B-3 for commercial parking lots require one space for each 200 square feet of floor area (Section 5-1, item 19, but halved because of the standards of B-3).  The City of Birmingham’s zoning ordinance allows for an urban structure to be built with zero setbacks, but it doesn’t require it; the regulations have set the minimum yard sizes at “none”, but they have not set a maximum.  The regs also have a minimum required number of parking spaces that is less strict that most other regions in the city, but it has no maximum space requirement.  So any developer who chooses to build here has the option to build a structure with relatively high lot coverage without seeking a variance to the rules, but he or she could just as easily build a quintessential suburban building as well.

I confidently suspected, back when I took these photos, that this Chick-fil-A adapted to this configuration only after significant wrangling with the City.  In light of these standards, it turns out I was right: the City’s Design Review Committee rejected some of Chick-fil-A’s initial proposals for the site back in 2010.  Why did the Committee reject them?  Because Chik-fil-A wanted to insert its suburban design typology smack in one of Birmingham’s most economically healthy urban neighborhoods, complete with a drive-thru in an area thick with both vehicular and pedestrian traffic.  Chick-fil-A’s initial design submission met zoning standards; the company’s team did nothing wrong.  But a combination of the Design Review Committee and concerned members of the Five Points South neighborhood fought the drive-thru option, claiming it would induce more traffic and—most importantly—was not “in keeping with the character of Five Points South.”  The Committee and Five Points South Association risked scaring off Chick-fil-A altogether as an investor in the neighborhood, but they weighed their risks and decided it was more important not to sacrifice the walkability of the area, especially since this new restaurant was replacing an equally suburban-minded predecessor: a shuttered Ruby Tuesday that also did an adequate job of respecting the urban character at the intersection, as indicated in a Google Streetview from June 2008.  After some further revisions, Chick-fil-A agreed to build at the corner without a drive-thru. 

And so it goes.  In most medium sized cities with weak mass transit, the national chains must face higher neighborhood and City-led scrutiny before they can plop their suburban buildings in a Midtown that is valiantly trying to recover from decades of decentralization and disinvestment.  Sometimes the zoning regulations are strict enough to prohibit building under anything but a supremely urban configuration, with minimum off-street parking, no drive-thrus, and zero setbacks.  However, out of fear of repelling virtually all potential investors, few cities yet enforce such draconian standards.  If a Walgreens or CVS or McDonald’s or Jack-in-the-Box thinks a certain urban setting is lucrative enough, it will probably jump through the hoops that the City throws at it, just as Chick-fil-A apparently did.  The result generally appears to be a win-win: a previously vacant (and potentially blighted) parcel gets filled with a reliable national retailer, and the surrounding community is content with the final appearance.

But there’s always a clincher.  Take a look at that one side of the Chick-fil-A—the side opposite the street intersection:

It’s still an awfully big parking lot for an average-sized restaurant.  Without counting the spaces (and without knowing the exact square footage of the building), I’d venture to say this Chick-fil-A has well more than the minimum of one parking space for every 200 square feet in the building’s floorplate.  It’s a suburban-sized parking lot.  And, even though the building is virtually flush with the parcel’s edges, it’s hardly dense in comparison to the environment around it: it’s still a squat one-story structure with a single use.  So, after all the negotiations between the City, the neighborhood, Chick-fil-A, and who knows what other parties, the result is still a one-story structure on a prime intersection, lacking any mixture of uses.  Not terribly urban, and certainly not in keeping with the type of buildings that Five Points South would have supported during its initial heyday back in the 1920s.

And so it goes…yet again.  Most of these Midtowns get buildings like this—urbanism with the bar set incredibly low.  It’s still better than a drive-thru fast food that sits smack in the middle of a sea of parking lots.  But—it seems ironic now—this is my second article in a row for which the phrase “Pyrrhic victory” seems appropriate.  One of Birmingham’s most attractive neighborhoods received this mediocre building in 2011, when it is possible that, given the likelihood that the neighborhood’s attractiveness will only increase in the future, it could have fought for a two or even a multi-story building at some point down the road, when land values are high enough that developers can’t justify such a big parking lot, or such low FAR (Floor-Area Ratio), or the zoning regulations insist on a high-density structure rather than simply permit it.

Obviously, I’m not faulting the City of Birmingham, or any other party, for that matter.  No one can gamble on the future when we reflect upon the vast array of interweaving temporal and spatial evolutions our cities have experienced in their relatively short lives.  Who would have perceived in 1950 that Atlanta would end up five times the size of Birmingham?  Back then, they were about the same size.  If one can imagine that Birmingham may someday surge into the stratosphere the way Atlanta did, this modest Chick-fil-A is a mere “bookmark” for the high density mixed-use building that will eventually replace it.  And, as placeholders go, a slightly modified suburban prototype is still better than a vacant building, or a massive parking lot.  My guess is that, in the intervening years, other national chains will stake their claim to vacant lots in Five Points South, and the negotiations will continue but under increasingly stricter design parameters with each iteration.  Eventually this bureaucratic routine might even encourage Chick-fil-A to partner with residential or office developers for a collaborative design process in urban settings.  Until then, Midtown Birmingham gets a new restaurant, and the commuters who shun it for its lack of a drive-thru still have plenty of other options—out in the burbs where they live.

Not all interstate highways are perpetuated equal.

While transportation infrastructure has long elicited a highly politicized debate in the US, particularly in regards to government funding of alternative methods (Amtrak and rail, supporting the persistently ailing airline industry), only in recent years have the discussions migrated more heavily toward inadequacies in road and highway infrastructure.  The collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis in August of 2007 helped stimulate the Federal Highway Administration to probe into the quality, level of maintenance and fundamental stability of some of the nation’s most heavily traveled bridges, while it prompted the Minnesota Department of Transportation to increase the state fuel tax mildly to fund bridge maintenance appropriately.

Five years later, the debate on the adequacy of transportation infrastructure funding persists: the most comprehensive current authorization of funds is the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, better known by its acronym SAFETEA-LU.  First signed by President Bush in 2005, it expired in September 2009, but Congress has extended it more than a half-dozen times since then.  The latest (ninth) extension expired today (June 30, or yesterday, depending on when this blog makes it to post), and while Congresshad long aimed to pass a final reauthorization bill, it seemed more likely, in this heavily fractious political climate, that it would simply settle for one or two more extensions until the November elections.   However, to many people’s surprise, President Obama was able to sign into law a bill that at least for the next week (until July 6) assured that no interruption to federal highway funding would take place.  It now appears most likely that a new bill will emerge in the next week, rather than yet another short-term extension.  For most Americans, none of this is particularly earth shattering news: only institutions with strong ties to lobbying are likely to follow the development of this bill on a day-to-day basis.  My suspicion, in fact, is that over 90% of Americans would not know what SAFETEA-LU is.  Does this seem strange, given our overwhelming dependence on the interstate highway system for traversing this mammoth country?

It may be premature for me to accuse Americans of prevailing complacency in this matter, but obviously there is a far greater confidence that the legislature always will do something about this, and the impact of that decision is not going to cause widespread polarization among the constituents.  Compare the passage of this bill to the results of the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act: everyone has been glued to their TVs!  The “complacent” label may seem snide, but it was certainly a word Minnesotans heard a fair amount in the summer of 2007, and it wasn’t targeted at residents of that state: negligence and indifference toward infrastructural needs was a nationwide problem back then, and it remains so today.  After MnDOT devised alternative transportation routes during the reasonably fast paced (13 month) reconstruction of the I-35W bridge, did we resume our blithe disregard?  Was the loss of 13 lives during that collapse simply not significant enough to confront the problem the same way we have confronted the funding of health care?

Looking across the recent improvements in our highway system, it’s hard to conclude that improvements in the Federal Interstate Highway System operate under a consistent authority—most likely because they don’t.  I-65 as it runs through Kentucky offers an excellent example.

As the image above indicates, this stretch of the 887-mile highway weaves between Kentucky’s undulating hills and limestone beds.  Just a few miles later further south, the landscape is virtually unchanged.

Perhaps a little flatter, but not much different than before.   This is how most of I-65 in Kentucky looks: with few exceptions, the interstate passes through overwhelmingly rural countryside.  Kentucky in general is not a terribly urban state: only one metro, Louisville/Jefferson County, ranks in the nation’s Top 50 for size, and only four cities (Louisville, Lexington, Bowling Green, Owensboro) claim populations over 50,000.  The state ranks 22^nd inpopulation density, but at 110 persons per square mile, it is less than a tenth as densely populated as some of the crowded northeastern states such as New Jersey and Rhode Island.  While traffic volumes for I-65 through Louisville are undoubtedly high at peak hours, the only two other communities of reasonable size (populations over 15,000) with exits along the I-65 stretch of Kentucky are Elizabethtown and Bowling Green.  These are the only communities outside of metro Louisville along the interstate that offer a choice of services (gas, food, lodging) beyond the bare minimum—quite a few of the already sporadic exits along I-65 offer nothing at all.

In short, Kentucky is not a particularly crowded state.  But most of its share of I-65 would suggest otherwise.  Through much of the Midwest and South, six lanes is reserved for more urbanized areas.  The only portions of I-65 in Indiana (a state with nearly double Kentucky’s population density) that are more than four lanes are the Indianapolis metro, NE Indiana around Gary and Merrillville, and the Louisville suburbs in southern Indiana.  Ohio, the tenth most densely populated state in the country, also claims huge stretches of rural interstate highways that are only four lanes wide.  But in recent years, Kentucky’s DOT has overseen the widening of nearly all of I-65, with the exception of a 43-mile segment south of Elizabethtown and north of Bowling Green, and the Governor articulates proposals for an upgrade there during the FY 2012 – FY 2018 Highway Plan.  Before long, all of I-65 in Kentucky will be at least six lanes wide.

Another noticeable feature is the superior lighting of I-65 in Kentucky across its exits.

Streetlights are numerous at the exit ramps, even if the intersecting street does not host a great deal of services or traffic.  In Indiana and Ohio, only the busiest of rural intersections get streetlights, and their number often depends on the traffic volumes: those with a variety of hotels and restaurants may have a dozen streetlights, those with only one or two gas stations may have a half dozen or less, and those that are the most rural will have none.  Conversely, in Kentucky, virtually every interchange on I-65 is now fully saturated with lights—urban or rural, and most are still resolutely rural.

When passing near Bowling Green, where the exits are often quite a bit busier, the streetlights are even more numerous.

Bowling Green is a moderately sized city of approximately 58,000 inhabitants.  Cities of such a size in either Ohio or Indiana are numerous, but in Kentucky, Bowling Green is the third largest city.  And between its three primary exits off of I-65, the segments of interstate remain consistently well-lit:

This stretch of highway deploys of stanchions in the median of the interstate, planted firmly in the Jersey barriers at short intervals.  Usually only larger metros of over 250,000 would integrate such a lighting technique, and exclusively when the interstate passes directly through the most urbanized area.  I-65 circumscribes the exurbs of Bowling Green, yet motorists still get some big-city lighting.  Indiana’s comparably sized cities—Anderson, Lafayette, Terre Haute, Muncie—only get lighting at the major exits.  Granted, the respective interstate does not pass directly through the hearts of those cities either, but the lighting is nowhere near as sophisticated.  Ohio shares the same condition as Indiana, with many lightly traveled interchanges remaining completely unlit.  Thus, Kentucky, despite being a significantly less densely populated state, has invested in highway infrastructure at a level that far surpasses that of its more urbanized neighbors to the north.  I have no doubt that I-65 through Kentucky receives a number of travelers passing through on this very important corridor that connects Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico.  But the fact remains that Indiana and Ohio also can claim significant trucking traffic in addition to their much larger population bases.  Both Indiana and Ohio, because of their proximity to other large cities inside and outside of the two states, have accommodated a significant ground logistical industry, suggesting that, in aggregate, their interstate highway segments will remain much busier than Kentucky’s for the foreseeable future, however well-used it may be.

This comparative observation by no means intends to criticize the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s transportation spending decisions, nor those of Indiana and Ohio.  It simply demonstrates the visible differences in states’ priorities.  Kentucky’s Highway Plan includes the proposal for spending Road Fund revenues appropriated in each new two-year period, which includes state and federal gasoline tax revenues.  This has proven a highly volatile source during the serious recession, due to reduced fuel consumption and purchase of vehicles.  The Federal Highway Trust Fund has been particularly unstable, not only because of reduced consumer spending but because Congress has not agreed on a suitable alternative to SAFETEA-LU since it expired; the series of resolution/extensions disburse about 20% fewer funds than before the act’s 2009 expiration.

Even if many fundamentals of a limited access highway (design, safety parameters) remain more or less the same from state to state, the “embellishments” will inevitably vary tremendously.  At least for now, Kentucky has some of the most luxurious interstates in terms of lane widths and lighting, particularly in relation to the fact that so much of the state is sparsely populated.  By contrast, signage is less developed in Kentucky than in other states: few—perhaps none—of the overpasses in Kentucky have any indicator of what the name of the road is, whereas in Indiana, most overpasses do.  And in Alabama, virtually every street has a particularly handsome sign:

These signs are relatively recently funded—probably simultaneous with the highway widening in Kentucky—and they closely approximate the Clearview font approved by the FHWA to phase out the older, splotchier Highway Gothic.  Notice this example here, with the new font on the overpass and the old one to the right of the road:

Alabama has the slickest signs I have seen among my own recent road trips.  And at this point, Kentucky interstate driving is about as comfy as you can get: roads as wide as you expect to see in Connecticut, but with a fraction of the population density.   Meanwhile, Ohio and the Mid Atlantic states have invested much more heavily in protective fencing to prevent injury when motorists on the overpass might throw objects out the car so that they could hit people below.  Ohio has these fences on almost all overpasses; Indiana, Alabama, and Tennessee have them on just a few; Kentucky has none.  Will we ever see a consistency among the states in all of the various infrastructural amenities?  I’m not holding my breath, and while I hate to end on a cynical note, it is clear that some states are devoting greater amounts of money to bridge maintenance than others—time will only tell where, amidst a decentralized transportation funding system, the next Minneapolis will take place.

Blotting out the by-line.

Keeping the theme of gently altered signs, I offer a follow-up on the “Huge Condos” blog post from two months ago. Though not as funny as the advertisement in Dayton, this sign manifests a completely different kind of error in judgment pertaining to real estate. For developers with comparatively low dependency on equity partners, with a faith that the development will yield a desirable ROI, with a comfortable debt-to-equity ratio, and with the know-how to operate and maintain (or the capacity to forge a contract with a good management agency) over the ensuing years, it is likely that they will not be as eager to dispose of the property. In other words, the developers will retain title as the property is leased and occupied.

But what if business fortunes take a turn for the worse and they change their minds? In both good and bad economic climates, properties change hands, businesses fold or consolidate. The notion that a single entity will ever own a parcel in perpetuity is farfetched, which makes the decision displayed on this “cornerstone” plaque at a lifestyle center just outside of Montgomery, Alabama all the more bizarre:

Apparently two firms named Alfa and Jim Wilson & Associates, Inc. developed The Shoppes at East Chase. But they also had a bigger role in the past.

Spraypainted in a somewhat concealing black is the word “owner”, suggesting that this is no longer the case. One or both companies have divested themselves of the ownership role, and someone (the new owner presumably) took the most efficient approach possible to show it. But this action raises two further questions. First of all, why did the owner opt for such a chintzy method of indicating this? Up close, it’s not even effective: anyone with remotely decent vision can see the “owner” marginally obscured through black paint. Is it really that expensive to buy a new plaque? Wouldn’t it be worth it to clarify the key players in the development and management of this lifestyle center?

Second, and more importantly, wouldn’t the new owner (the Australian company Centro apparently) want to draw more attention to his or her name? This shopping node, while nowhere near as smartly designed as some new lifestyle centers in comparable southern state capitals such as Baton Rouge or Jackson (a topic I hope to explore at length in the future), still fits the mold for the retail typology that is most popular and successful these days. East Chase itself seems to be doing well enough, poor economy notwithstanding. At the time of my visit in the summer of 2010, it was probably 85 to 90% occupied. And it’s clearly the retail node in metro Montgomery with the healthiest potential. It sits squarely outside the city limits, in the eastern fringe which seems to be absorbing most of the suburban out-migration. Compare this to the more conventional, purely enclosed Eastdale Mall:

This mall, about two miles to the west and on the edge of the city limits, is doing fine from a superficial glance on a bustling Saturday night. All the department stores were occupied and most of the inline stores were filled as well. But many of the most lucrative tenants—middle to highbrow names like Hollister, Banana Republic, and Talbott’s—all fled the larger Eastdale Mall, presumably around 2002 when East Chase opened. The replacements at the older Eastdale are predominantly mom and pop stores, not the sort of thing a major mall seeks in order to ensure steady foot traffic. I’d be very surprised if, 16 months since taking these photos, the Eastdale Mall hasn’t demonstrated more visible signs of decline. Meanwhile, the next highest concentration of retail square footage in the Montgomery metro area is the Montgomery Mall, on the south side of town in the city limits.

And it’s dead, my friend.

Completely closed. It still appears well-maintained: no graffiti and very little litter, the landscaping is reasonably groomed, and the pavement on the parking lot is not too pockmarked yet. But this could be merely because the Montgomery Mall hasn’t been closed for long, and the shift of retail energy from within the city limits to the eastern suburbs is a gradual process.

But something about that palimpsest plaque at The Shoppes at East Chase is troubling. Perhaps it, too, was a temporary solution while a new sign was on order; I just happened to catch the man behind the curtain at the inopportune time. If not, though, and the spraypainted owner is there to stay, then it may be that something is amiss in terms the operations at this most promising of Montgomery’s retail nodes. After all, it struck me as a bit surprising that one of their big-box, “category killer” stores was vacant.

I presume this to have been a Staples, which was not a business known for shuttering a large number of its stores in 2010. The red of the company’s trademark façade may be the akin to the color of the herring I’m following, but the telltale signs of a struggling retail environment in an otherwise healthy metro (Montgomery is unquestionably the most prosperous area in Alabama’s largely impoverished Black Belt region) are the stuff that retail experts and developers use to determine where future expansion should take place. It could be that the nine-year-old East Chase is already past its prime, and another retail hub is in the works, even further out in the decentralized eastern suburbs. Maybe the developer would have enough confidence to hang on to the property a bit longer…or at least find a more adaptable plaque for display.

When Disney's main street is the last man standing (without support).

I was hoping at this point to begin a new article on the effect the climate has on the soil here in Afghanistan. Mid-March being the peak of the rainy season here, I figured I’d come up with some demonstrative photos and explore the ramifications that rain has on human habitations here. But so far, Mother Nature has thwarted my efforts: we’ve had nothing but unexpectedly warm, sunny, and dry weather this entire March so far, so I have no photos to offer as proof. I’m not yet concerned. We’re bound to encounter a thunderstorm eventually, here at the northern edge of the Hindu Kush mountain range. The rainy season doesn’t usually end until mid-April. And when we do get that rain, I promise I’ll deliver an article analyzing impacts of precipitation on Afghan soil. Try to contain your excitement.



In the meantime, I return to the States to visit a familiar topic: the “artificial” removal of the vast majority of a structure while preserving the façade. I use the word “artificial” with some hesitation—thus the quotes—because this act, usually (clumsily) called façadectomy, has become so commonplace that it’s almost a natural part of many re-emerging historic urban environments. In most instances, the façade is propped up while the developer builds something else behind it—usually an entirely different building with a floor plan that meets modern demands. Thus, the process is predicated upon the notion that everything about the structure is obsolete except the way the front of it engaged with its surroundings (i.e., the street and adjacent buildings). And in many cases, it is. The entire building would have met the wrecking ball otherwise; keeping the façade allows building and its immediate surroundings to retain a simulacrum of salvaged history. Preservationists usually frown at the façadectomy practice, no doubt because it taints the integrity of this discipline by implying that the veneer is what really matters. A façadectomy implies that the essence of the building—its ability to enclose specific human activities—is expendable, tossing most of the refinement of true preservation out the window and reducing it to a cosmetic exercise. Conversely, anyone preparing a rebuttal to a criticism of façadectomies would argue that the façade really is the most important aspect, while building interiors often undergo far more frequent surgeries over the life cycle of a building. Rare is the National Historic Landmark that enjoys preservation inside and out, so salvaging the just the façade—the one part that the vast majority of people will actually see—frequently succeeds as a cause célèbre in populist preservation. Thus, the “ectomies” continue.

But what happens when the developers salvage the façade, only to replace it with nothing? I first noted this occurrence early on in the life of this blog, when it took me by surprise on Memphis’ Beale Street. For several of the structures along this popular, touristy entertainment hub, the façades are all that survive. If a visitor passes through what used to be an entrance, he or she encounters a courtyard featuring a restaurant and bar.

But from the outside, it doesn't look remotely like a building: the girders supporting the structure make no attempt at subtlety; the masonry where the rest of the building was demolished is still jagged and irregular; the windows are just gaping apertures without glass. It looks like exactly what it is: a brick sheath suspended in an upright position. From a greater distance it's a bit more convincing, and it retains the essence of a contiguous street wall—the classic old-fashioned main street with a storefront at the ground level and apartments or offices on the floors above. As much as I hate sneering Disney analogies, the illusion Beale Street hopes to create is not unlike Disneyland's Main Street, which in itself is a specious paradigm since Disney's corridor owes its vibrancy to a captive audience and its imperviousness to conventional urban blight. Beale Street is vibrant too, no doubt due more to its loose alcohol than because it still harbors a genuine blues community, or many of the Street's actual buildings for that matter. From a distance, Beale Street looks like the real deal. But up close, it's like Pinocchio hoping to become a real boy (alas, another Disney analogy)—the semblance of a building that depends on a human presence to animate and legitimize it.

Keeping this in mind, I was less surprised when I encountered a similar practice in Mobile. Alabama’s southernmost big city, and probably the one with the most distinctive vernacular architecture, has an emergent entertainment corridor in the form of Dauphin Street, a remarkably long main street (over ten blocks) for a not-so-large city.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to determine whether the corridor is enjoying a rebirth or a decline. Vacancy was pretty high on a summer 2010 visit, with some surprising shuttered storefronts:

I know we’re long past the microbrew craze, but at least one should survive on the primary entertainment spine of a metro of over one quarter million. Mobile didn’t appear to have one in business. And the surest sign that Dauphin Street isn’t hot property is the presence of a storefront church:

I've blogged about this a ton in the past. If you see one of these, you can rest assured that the landlord is hard-up for any tenant and rents are low—especially in an area that most likely is trying to attract high-energy, revenue generating debauchery more than piety.


But I don’t want to knock the town when it’s down. Like much of the Gulf Coast, the Mobile area suffered significant losses from Hurricane Katrina, and some of the vacancies might be residual consequences. The fact remains that Dauphin Street almost exclusively features locally owned businesses, and the eyesores alternate in equal measure with streetscapes like this:

Or this:

Or this one:

The establishment in that last photo (probably a restaurant) may be out of business, but the building itself appears well-maintained. None of the grillwork on the balconies is rusted, so it probably hasn’t been shuttered for long. But a trick camera angle is the only thing retaining the duplicity here.
The surgery is much more obvious.

Like the building in Memphis’ Beale Street, it’s an old façade with girders holding it up. But it does show some critical differences. On Beale Street, the girders stood front and center, occupying part of the sidewalk. Here in Mobile, the supports are a bit more subtle because they sit in the back. But this façade also has something else supporting it; unlike Memphis, it’s more than a partition between the street and an open-air courtyard.
The lower level hosts genuine retail space. Whatever the tenant used to be, it was protected from the elements. The alleyway opening to the left of the facade shows how far back the structure extends, seen in the photo angling to the right of the alley:


The scarring of the masonry in both photos suggests that this alleyway underwent some heavy surgery as well in order to achieve its current condition. No doubt at some point in the distant past, this area had a roof. Another significant alteration is right there at the entrance.


Most likely the first floor hosted some large storefront windows flush with the façade, but now they are gated, and the physical entrance to the shelter is offset, allowing a sort of loggia for potential open-air seating—one more reason I think it was intended as a restaurant.

But the most invasive aspect of this façadectomy manifests itself when you crane your neck.

If it weren't for the installation of a new first floor, this building would look just as goofy as the one in Memphis: a decorative brick wall suspended high into the air. But thanks to the restaurant installation at the ground level and the concealment of the girders, it genuinely takes a keen eye to notice the illusion—quite a contrast from the far more obvious, contrived effort in Memphis. Preservationists may groan at the shallowness of either of these initiatives, but they still demonstrate a conscious attempt to retain at least part of the historic commercial character of their respective streets. In both cases, the owner of the property may be waiting until the market is right for a higher and better use. At that point, he or she could fill in the remaining void with a structure that matches the façade.

Filling in the void and completing the façadectomy would be much easier with Memphis. The Mobile example hints at something a bit more problematic and pervasive: many once-struggling commercial corridors are enjoying a revival through renewed populist appreciation in older architecture. But does this revival penetrate the entirety of the building? All to often, the first floor is the only thing capable of landing a tenant: the upper levels remain empty and sometimes quite decrepit. New Orleans' Royal Street in the French Quarter offers a great example, where the first floor is replete with active storefronts hosting often high-end art, antiques, and collectables. Yet even there, where retail space rents at high prices (for New Orleans' standards), the upper levels are frequently shuttered—a problem throughout much of the Quarter. The quaint ideal of retail on bottom and housing above is a concept we idealize but rarely embrace in actuality. Mixed-use seems great when someone else is creating the mixture. But the market demand for it—the best way to find an occupant for those other levels—is often miniscule.

This storefront on Mobile's Dauphin Street looked good enough for a restaurant, and in a better economic climate, it will probably find a new tenant. But the likelihood of demand escalating enough to justify building a structure for those other two floors is slim. In fact, a restaurant on the first floor may actually be a deterrent to transforming those upper levels into residential or office. Food handling is an extremely tough use to mix. Not too many people want the same smells wafting into their home or workspace every day from the restaurant below, no matter how good it may be. And even the best maintained of restaurants have a greater propensity for attracting vermin such as mice or roaches. Ask anyone who's lived next to a grocery store. Ask me.

In light of these undertakings in Memphis and now Mobile, it's hard to take a firm stand on façadectomies. Like it or not, they're part of a sub-practice within historic preservation, and they speak volumes about when the effort to salvage a structure aligns with demand—and when they clearly only generate dischord. We've already lost hundreds of buildings that intended to mix retail and residential throughout this country, and we'll lose many more in the future. Even if Dauphine and Beale Street become trendy entertainment destinations (the latter one already is), nothing suggests that main street architecture has more than a niche appeal—a antique collector's nostalgia. If anything else were the case, the majority of intact American main streets would be flourishing by now, but clearly they aren't. I still hold hope that we will witness the restoration of numerous other aging, pedestrian-scaled buildings in the decades to come, but not all will enjoy preservation from top to bottom, back to front. A flimsy brick wall surviving by braces may look ridiculous, but the care involved in trying to save it earns a distinctiveness all its own. And maybe these shells will find a new hermit crab to re-inhabit them, filling out the remaining three walls, then finding a tenant on those upper-level apartments who never grows tired of the southern barbecue smells simmering below.

Vestigial Judaism, Part II: Rural/urban distinctions in the South.

In the first half of this blog post, I explored to the best of my ability the shifting religious landscape from an often overlooked perspective: that of the small-town southern Jew. The South is not without its high concentrations of Jews, particularly in south Florida (north of Miami), a rapidly growing population in major cities like Atlanta or Houston, and—depending on whether one considers it a southern city—Washington DC. However, the general perception remains that the white population of the rural South is a relative monoculture: in some regions, over 90% of the white population identifies with Protestantism; the numbers for African Americans aren’t much lower. And in three states (Mississippi, Alabama, and Oklahoma) over 30% of the population belongs to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Thus, an inference of relative religious homogeneity is not entirely unfounded.

But the rural south was not always a mere stronghold of Christiany; or exclusive Christian, for that matter. Though today they would qualify as small towns, in the 19th century, communities of over 5,000 people were often perceived as bustling commercial centers in the overwhelmingly agrarian south. Towns such as Donaldsonville and St. Francisville, Louisiana—both under 10,000 today—were flourishing communities that attracted Jews from Alsace, no doubt due in part to the shared French affinity. After the Industrial Revolution, the settlement patterns of the US marched aggressively toward favoring the large cities, though of course the South urbanized much later and at a much slower pace. However, by time of the Depression, the aforementioned towns in Louisiana began to feel their importance erode, as the major cities of New Orleans (long the commercial capital of the South) and a rapidly growing Baton Rouge left Donaldsonville and St. Francisville to relative stagnancy. The Jewish population plunged in these small towns, as their retail trades became engulfed by nationally recognized department and variety stores. The children in these Jewish families left town or—particularly in Catholic areas such as south Louisiana—intermarried with Christians. In many southern towns, all that remains of the Jewish heritage is a tiny cemetery on the outskirts, but a well-attuned eye can find other evidence throughout the Cotton Belt.

The Jewish presence of Mississippi is remarkably well-chronicled, especially considered that only about 1,500 Jews live in the state today, less than a quarter of the population from a century prior. One such town is Port Gibson, Mississippi, resting along the Blues Highway U.S. 61 about halfway between the state’s only two older cities, Vicksburg and Natchez, both of which also had much larger Jewish populations during their heydays over a century ago. Today, the significantly smaller Port Gibson (population 1800) does not have an active commercial main street, but its principal residential artery, the leafy Church Street (also Highway 61 in Port Gibson city limits) remains remarkably well preserved and undoubtedly possessed the character that made it “too beautiful to burn” after General Ulysses Grant completed his Vicksburg Campaign, cutting off Confederate Control of the Mississippi River.



A good mile or so of Church Street features this canopy of live oaks and stately Victorian and Tutor homes. The Temple Gemiluth Chassed has not enjoyed regular use for over 30 years, yet it remains in remarkably good shape.

According the encyclopedia at the Institute of Southern Jewish Life http://www.isjl.org/ , the Jewish population first arrived in Port Gibson by the 1840s, though not until the eve of the Civil War was the population large enough to sign a charter for their congregation. During the war, the Port Gibson Jewish population exhibited an unusually high level of support for the Confederate cause, with nearly half the population (and perhaps nearly all the adult males) joining the Army, even though only a few owned slaves. The building in the photo above did not break ground until 1891 and remains distinct as perhaps the only surviving example of Moorish architecture in all of Mississippi.


Like the Jewish congregation of St. Francisville, Louisiana (discussed in Part I of this blog post), Port Gibson struggled to retain a rabbi. One of the earliest, a graduate of Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College, noted with distaste the institutionalized racial discrimination of the region, and Gemiluth Chassed never truly prospered. However, the building still enjoyed some level of use up through the 1980s, when the Jewish population of Port Gibson numbered four. Both historical documentation and visual evidence suggest that the town’s Jewish community evolved from within: the Institute of Southern Jewish Life reports that active participation in Shabbat declined, as did keeping kosher. Some families even displayed Christmas trees in their windows. After the congregation closed in the 1980s, the City was about to demolish the temple for a parking lot, but a local gentile family bought it to preserve it; the 100th anniversary of the structure brought Jews and non-Jews together in a commitment to the preservation of the heritage of southern Jewry. Thus, Gemiluth Chassed stands to this day, in remarkably good shape, though its current use is unclear. Contextual observations reveal why its history seems anomalous in a variety of ways:



Yes, a gas station sits in the background, suggesting that a number of structures already faced the bulldozer as Port Gibson steadily depopulated in the second half of the twentieth century. Even more intriguing is the descriptive sign hanging out front.

A Messianic congregation? Really? If this is truly the case, then its position on the ISJL website is questionable, since Messianic Jews believe that salvation depends on the acceptance of Jesus Christ as a savior—a position that both Jewish and Christian theologians would agree places it under the fundamental rubrics for Christianity. It is unlikely that the Jewish population in Port Gibson always had Messianic origins, since the movement did not emerge into the mainstream until the 1960s. But this declaratory sign may help to explain the community’s continued isolation, its inability to secure a rabbi, and—I’m going out on a limb—its comparatively high level of support for the Confederacy when most other Southern Jews were ambivalent. The Jewish population in Port Gibson may have lingered into the 1980s, but Judaism as a faith waned decades before, as the congregation passively allowed the overwhelmingly dominant Christian culture to encroach. By the time of Gemiluth Chassed’s closure, the Jews of this Bible Belt region identified with enough features of Christianity that they were willing to articulate it.

Although shadow of its former self—the main street of Port Gibson is big enough to suggest a much larger city—Port Gibson’s religious buildings, most of them appropriately flanking Church Street, remain in conditions ranging from good to impeccable. Today the town is 80% African American, yet the structures of these European derived, mainline Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish communities survive as references—signaling to passers-by the town’s diverse heritage, a time when Mississippi’s towns and towns across all America wielded enough economic influence to attract entrepreneurial immigrants.






Selma, Alabama’s commercial growth and decline somewhat parallels that of Port Gibson, but with a peak population of 28,000—the amplitude of its changes has understandably been greater. Together with the state’s capital Montgomery (50 miles to the east), the population here rests in the heart of the state’s Black Belt, a strip of counties across the mid-southern part of the state, named for the rich, black topsoil so suitable for growing cotton, but also associated with the high percentage of African Americans living there. Most Americans today, if they are familiar with Selma at all, associate the city with the March 1965 voting rights marches that stretched from the town to the state’s capital. But Selma was a prominent small city prior to the Civil War, thanks to the processing of the abundant cotton and proximity to the distributional hub in Montgomery. According to the chronicles of the ISJL, Sephardic Jewish merchants began arriving to the city within twenty years of its 1820 incorporation, though for the entire 19th century, the population held services at private residences or space rented in churches. During the War, Selma was an epicenter of manufacturing supplies and weaponry for the southern cause; considering that nearby Montgomery was the initial capital of the Confederacy, sentiments among Jews in Selma toward secession were wide-ranging. Not until 1900 did the Congregation Mishkan Israel dedicate a synagogue.



Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Selma’s Jewish population was robust—for about forty years, the city claimed an Orthodox congregation as well—and, as the historic marker above indicates, three of the city’s mayors were Jewish. The Civil Rights Movement polarized the community much as it did a century earlier: some of the most prominent Jewish retailers were ardent segregationists, though modern historians estimate that the majority of Selma’s Jews supported integration, even as they resented the paternalism of northern Jewish intervention. The population peaked at over 300 at around 1940, which at that point was approximately 1.5% of the city’s population. The decline was gradual at first, but then hemorrhaged after the 1977 closure of the nearby Craig Air Force Base, which in turn triggered a steady departure of industry from the city. Selma has lost over a fourth of its population since that time; the 2010 will likely reveal a city depopulated by more than a third from its 1960 peak of 28,000. The precipitous decline of the city is manifest in the downtown, which, as Alabama’s largest historic district, hints at former prosperity in the embellished buildings, many of which have long since been abandoned.




Only about twenty Jews remain in Selma today, most of whom are elderly; the congregation only holds worship services a few times a year in the original structure.

My first reaction when I passed the building was that it must be abandoned, largely due to the disheveled appearance of the grounds, and partly, I confess, due to my somewhat prejudicial disbelief that a city so economically depressed would still have a Jewish population. But closer observation of Temple Mishkan Israel reveals that it is in generally good shape: the roof (one of the first features to decay in an unmaintained building) looks fine, and the complete absence of wood obviously means painting is unnecessary. The congregation probably hires a groundskeeper to do just the minimum requisite lawn mowing and hedge trimming in order to save money.


The frosted look of the stained glass windows on either side originally gave me the impression that the place was sealed and vacant, but I now believe they have just been protected from thick exterior glass, no doubt to ward-off vandals or potential burglars. The structure’s metaphoric and literal relation to the surrounding city resembles Port Gibson’s Gemiluth Chassed in a number of regards: both appear in excellent physical shape, yet the owners have transformed them into mausoleums, protected from the outside world and left in stasis, and signaling to the passers-by a heritage all but removed from the region. Temple Mishkan Israel has also intermittently hosted multi-faith gatherings that drive home the importance of cultural preservation, but Selma offers no visible incentive to encourage young Jews to move there, or its meager remaining population to stay. Preservation advocates may have to step up to the plate before too long, because comparative evidence in other communities suggests that the Jewish population in Selma will soon shrink to nothing—at that point, without a sponsor, Mishkan Israel may soon face the wrecking ball.

The cost for preserving a religious building when no subscribers to the faith live nearby must be astronomical. Yet Port Gibson and Selma both offer examples of intensified stewardship for obsolescent structures that would struggle to find a renaissance. Jews in the South have clearly reorganized itself significantly over the past forty years, but, if the above buildings are any evidence, their prejudicial histories will remain standing for decades to come.

Stay tuned again for the third and final part in this series, in which I explore the further evidence of prior Jewish settlements in the South, only this time using large metropolitan areas.