HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY
Part Eleven: Interstates and urban renewal

PHOTO: TN Department of Transportation
The federal government, with the help of the states, did a lot to change life in America during the generation after World War II. Two examples of this are the interstate highway system and urban renewal.
Road builders (circa 1960) about to work on an interstate
PHOTO: TN Department of Transportation
The interstates

The U.S. government first started funding the national interstate system in 1956. The idea was to make it easier to get from one part of the country to another, especially in case of a national military emergency. With limited access and gradual on-ramps, American interstates were modeled after a German superhighway -- built in the 1930s -- called the autobahn. Under the original American program, taxes raised by the federal government would pay for 90 percent of the cost of an interstate highway system that consisted of 41,000 miles.
Al Gore Sr.
U.S. Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee was one of the main Congressional sponsors of the interstate plan. (He is, of course, the late father of former Vice President Al Gore Jr.) Largely because of this, all interstates leading into Tennessee are marked the "Albert Gore, Sr. Memorial Highway."

Meanwhile, the interstates were one of President Dwight Eisenhower's favorite domestic programs. Nationally, the American system of superhighways is referred to as the Eisenhower Interstate System.
Interstate 24 under construction across the Cumberland Plateau, near Monteagle
PHOTO: TN Department of Transportation
It took a long time for the interstates to be built. It was, after all, the largest government purchase of land in state history, and bridges had to be built and new routes found and cleared through mountainous regions such as the Cumberland Plateau. The first stretches of interstate highway through Tennessee were opened in 1958, with most of Interstates 40 and 65 through the state completed during the 1960s. The new superhighways weren't opened all at once, but one stretch at a time; for many years a driver had to get an updated road map to find out which ten or fifteen mile stretches of new shiny interstate were opened.
A bridge across the Harpeth River under construction along Interstate 40 in Middle Tennessee
PHOTO: TN Department of Transportation
Today there are 1,105 miles of interstate highway in Tennessee. These highways have dramatically shrunk the time needed to travel from one part of the state to another. Prior to the creation of Interstate 40 (I-40), for instance, it might have taken nine or ten hours to drive two-lane highways from Nashville to Knoxville, through towns such as Lebanon, Sparta, Crossville, Rockwood and Kingston. Now, traffic permitting, it only takes three.

Today the interstates make it possible to live in one county and work in another (today tens of thousands of people live in Williamson County but work in Davidson County). They have created new bedroom suburbs all over the state. And they make it possible to drive from one part of the state to another simply to watch a sporting event. Before the advent of interstate superhighways there is no way that more than 100,000 people could go see a football game in Knoxville. Now, with I-40 and I-75 in place, this happens routinely, half a dozen times, each fall.

Interstates have also made travel by car infinitely safer than it used to be. Believe it or not, the chances of getting killed or hurt on the road are far less now than they were, say in the 1950s, partly because the roads are wider, safer and better designed.
Highway 41 in Coffee County
Most people obviously view these as positive changes. But interstates have affected the landscape in more ways than people realize. Commercial activity in towns like Cookeville, Manchester, and Jackson has completely shifted from the town center to the nearest interstate exit. If you drive to these town centers today you can see definite signs that there used to be a lot more happening there than there is now.

And if you drive through Tennessee along an interstate you don't really experience the state in the same way as if you travel the old two-lane highways. You don't see the small roadside motels; or the courthouses; or the roadside picnic stands that impressed people in the 1940s. So the next time you are traveling through the state, you might want to travel along one of the old two-lane highways such as Highway 70, 41, or 11. You see things that way that you don't see on the Eisenhower Interstate System.

For more on the history of Tennessee's interstates, click here.
Houses in Nashville before urban renewal
PHOTOS: Metro Nashville Archives
Urban renewal

The phrase "urban renewal" refers to a series of programs that were mainly funded by the federal government in the 1950s and 1960s to combat inner-city blight and help downtowns deal with all the changes wrought by the automobile. Before urban renewal, thousands of people in cities like Memphis, Nashville and Chattanooga lived in densely packed shacks with no running water, no heat and unsafe wiring. It was not unusual for residential areas to be located in parts of town that regularly flooded, leading to horrible health problems. In the cities there were entire neighborhoods in which the plumbing system consisted of water spigots in the front yard and outhouses out back. These slums had abnormally high crime and low life expectancy rates. Some neighborhoods also had high concentrations of vice, from open prostitution to cockfighting.
A house in Nashville before urban renewal
PHOTO: Metro Nashville Archives
Behind the idea of urban renewal was a belief that if the government removed people from such places and put them in better places, it would improve not only their lives and their self-image, but also their behavior. This idealistic philosophy became common in America by the end of World War I, but didn't become a powerful force in government until Franklin Roosevelts's New Deal policies of the 1930s.
A modern public housing project in the 1950s. Note that this project was for whites-only.
PHOTO: Metro Nashville Archives
One of the most tangible signs of this philosophy was public housing, which was authorized by Congress in the 1930s and resulted in the construction of several public housing projects in Tennessee by the end of that decade. (Public housing refers to houses and apartments where the rent is heavily subsidized by the government.) In its early years, public housing was segregated, which is why Memphis' first public housing project (Lauderdale Homes) was for whites only and its second public housing project (Dixie Homes) was for blacks only. After World War II Congress extended urban renewal laws and expanded the programs. Soon municipalities across the state were working on an urban renewal plan (often known as a redevelopment plan).
The Tennessee State Capitol before urban renewal
PHOTO: Metro Nashville Archives
America's urban renewal era ended in the 1970s. Today the organizations set up to execute urban renewal operate under names such as the Memphis Housing Authority and the Metropolitan (Nashville) Development and Housing Agency. But today there are remnants of urban renewal almost everywhere you look. There is public housing all over the state (the largest concentration is in Memphis, which once had no less than 22 housing projects). The hill surrounding the Tennessee State Capitol building used to be packed with small houses; an urban renewal project called the Capitol Hill Redevelopment Project resulted in all of those houses being torn down, replaced with a public park and a new boulevard.
Downtown Elizabethton in the 1970s
PHOTO: Barge Waggoner Sumner & Cannon
Urban renewal also took hold in medium sized cities, many of which used urban renewal laws to pay for public housing, new bridges, and new thoroughfares. The by-pass around Shelbyville (Highway 387) is a product of urban renewal. So is the one-way traffic system through Elizabethton. So are the public housing projects in Jackson.

There was a time when the phrase "urban renewal" was a popular one. But today it often carries a negative connotation; some people today say that urban renewal was a failure in terms of reducing crime in the inner city and that its policies were too stringent. Regardless of the truth, however, urban renewal did a lot to change cities in Tennessee.

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