“Urban renewal means Negro removal” 

-James Baldwin, Interview on WNDT-TV, New York City, May 28, 1963.

The construction of the Central Freeway displaced thousands of Black San Franciscans. Tearing it down three decades later displaced many more. The role of city planning in enforcing stark inequalities is often glossed over, but the history of Hayes Valley offers a sharp illustration of these choices and impacts.

The 1940s saw a sharp climb in San Francisco’s Black population, growing almost ten times over from 4,846 in 1940 to 43,502 in 1950. The Western Addition, which includes Hayes Valley, went from 6% Black to 34% in that same time period, though these numbers are likely undercounts (Klein 13). As a bustling cultural hub, the Western Addition was known in the middle decades of the 20th century as the “Harlem of the West.” The district was also home to a large portion of the city’s Japanese Americans and immigrant communities.

As jobs and white residents fled cities nationwide post-WWII, San Francisco among them,  tax revenue and blue collar jobs collapsed, resulting in high rates of poverty and unemployment. Due to practices of redlining and racist economic and social policies, residents of color were trapped in declining cities and bore the brunt of these hardships. In attempts to recover their depressed economies, cities took up the goal of modernizing and increasing their appeal via “urban renewal” (McDonald).

As a percentage of the city’s total population, San Francisco’s Black population was highest in 1970 at 13% (96,078 residents). This figure fell to 12% in 1980 and 11% in 1990. In 2000, this figure dropped to a mere 8% (Stewart). The city’s targeted urban renewal projects, which they also referred to as “slum clearance,” caused displacement within San Francisco beginning in the 1950s, which over time turned into people being pushed out of the city altogether. This was precisely the point of urban renewal: “As part of their case for action, the [city planners in 1966] point out that, based on population trends, by 1978 African Americans would make up 16.5 percent of the population, while a more desirable ‘target’ amount would be 13 percent (for whites, the trend was 71 percent and the target was 76)” (Klein 5-6).

As the number of people commuting into San Francisco skyrocketed in the 1950s, the city saw increased traffic congestion and responded with new infrastructure. City planners identified the predominantly Black Western Addition as a prime location for slum clearance and freeway construction. The construction of the Central Freeway in 1959 was one such urban renewal project. While San Francisco city planners characterized urban renewal plans as anti-poverty programs, this rhetoric fell short when they set out to relocate and hide poverty rather than eradicate it (Klein 8). As San Francisco’s legacy of urban renewal shows, the primary goal was to attract wealthy residents to the city at the expense of poorer ones, particularly poorer residents of color.

“One of the purposes of renewal when it was called slum clearance was not only to get rid of the people and the structures but to make sure those blighting influences didn’t come back. And so there was no intent to rebuild for the kind of people who were being displaced.”

 -Gene Suttle, Former San Francisco Redevelopment Agency Deputy Executive Director and Western Addition Area Director

After damage in the 1989 earthquake and a sustained lobbying campaign by a group of neighborhood residents and business owners, the stretch of the Central Freeway north of Fell Street was demolished in 1991. In the freeway’s place came an influx of money, attention, development, and new residents and businesses, changing the makeup over the following decades so drastically that photos of the neighborhood in 1991 are almost unrecognizable next to today’s landscape. While some of these changes began to take shape in the years prior to the demolition with a handful of primarily art and design oriented shops moving in, the pace of change accelerated rapidly after the removal of the freeway. 

Before the Central Freeway was ever built, city planners had chosen their targets

In 1947, city planner Mel Scott was hired by San Francisco to write a report on potential redevelopment of the Western Addition. This report highlighted the area’s high crime rates and unemployment as well as the condition of its housing as evidence of “blight,” which qualified it for “a clean sweep,” in Scott’s words (Klein 14). As part of this plan, Scott predicted a minority of the neighborhood’s current residents would be able to afford to remain there after redevelopment (Klein 16). The map above displays an area of the Western Addition that the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency selected in 1954 for the first of two phases of slum clearance in the district.

Does this shot remind you of any other maps you have seen? What are the complexities that come with drawing lines through communities?

1991 marked the highly anticipated demolition of a portion of the Central Freeway. At the start of 1992, City Hall Market, pictured here on the right, became Anna’s Market. New building projects sprung up in place of the freeway rubble and business began to boom in the neighborhood for the first time in decades. This boom was not felt positively by all Hayes Valley residents and business owners however, as many could not afford the rising rents in the following years and were forced to move or shut down.

What emotions do you feel when you look at this photo of the demolition next to the photo of the intact offramp? How might the day this second photo was taken have felt for residents of Hayes Valley or for the owner of City Hall Market?

This clipping from the San Francisco Chronicle written by Shann Nix highlights the excitement of Hayes Valley merchants over the demolition of the Central Freeway section. Madeline Behrens-Brigham, a shop owner, declares that Hayes Valley “is changing from a nothing-happening place to an involved community.” Nix provides the reader with a sense of the neighborhood as a vibrant center of art. This piece appears to aim to inspire excitement in Chronicle readers about the changes afoot in Hayes Valley.

What other reactions may have existed alongside the ones that appear in this article? Why might alternate perspectives be left out here? Does this article feel similar or different from journalism you have read about neighborhood change today?

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above image is a Google StreetView photo from May of 2021 of the same spot as the previous photo of 1991’s freeway demolition, thirty years later. The same building remains at 424 Hayes St, though the paint is now forest green. In this photo, the storefront is for lease after Alternative Apparel closed, though their name is still seen here in the window. There have been at least three businesses at this address since the closure of City Hall Market, according to records from San Francisco’s Registered Business Locations open data set (https://data.sfgov.org/Economy-and-Community/Registered-Business-Locations-San-Francisco/g8m3-pdis/data).

What aspects of the past are visible in this photo? Walking down this block, what assumptions would you make about the neighborhood and its history?

With soaring levels of development and displacement in the section of the Western Addition now called Hayes Valley, the project of urban renewal appears to continue to this day, despite city officials condemning its damaging legacy. 

Sources for Further Research:

San Francisco Public Library Digital Collections: https://digitalsf.org 

“Western Addition: A Basic History” by Gary Kamiya https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Western_Addition:_A_Basic_History

“The Birth and Life of the Freeway in Hayes Valley” by Reginald McDonald https://hoodline.com/2015/08/hayes-valley-the-central-freeway/

Annotated Sources:

Klein, Jordan. “A Community Lost: Urban Renewal and Displacement in San Francisco’s Western Addition District,” 2008. 

Relevance: Klein provides an in depth history of the Western Addition district and of urban renewal projects there. He also examines the history of urban renewal on the national scale, connecting local projects to national policy. Maintaining a city planning focus, Klein spends the second half of his thesis discussing attempts by the city to right the wrongs of urban renewal.

Schafran, Alex. The Road to Resegregation: Northern California and the Failure of Politics. University of California Press, 2019. 

Relevance: Schafran thoroughly delves into multiple factors that have driven the relatively recent “resegregation” of the Bay Area. Of the sources on this list, Schafran’s book includes the largest focus on NIMBYism, which is essential in understanding San Francisco’s current housing affordability crisis. Mixing history and policy suggestions, Schafran both deepens and expands the scholarly and local conversations around gentrification, housing justice, and the racialized impacts of Northern California’s urban planning choices. 

Shaw, Randy. Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. 1st ed., University of California Press, 2018, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctv5cgbsh.

Relevance: This book contains multiple chapters about gentrification in San Francisco and the Bay Area more broadly. Shaw provides a comprehensive overview of the forces behind the present state of displacement in various cities around the country. He focuses on various forms of resistance to gentrification and possible interventions that can be made by cities, illustrating that displacement is not an inevitability.

Bibliography:

Klein, Jordan. “A Community Lost: Urban Renewal and Displacement in San Francisco’s Western Addition District,” 2008.

McDonald, Reginald. “The Birth and Life of the Freeway in Hayes Valley.” Hoodline, October 23, 2020. https://hoodline.com/2015/08/hayes-valley-the-central-freeway/. 

Schafran, Alex. The Road to Resegregation: Northern California and the Failure of Politics. University of California Press, 2019.

Shaw, Randy. Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. 1st ed., University of California Press, 2018, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctv5cgbsh.

Stewart, Juell. “San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee Presentation.” San Francisco: Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association, September 2021. 

The Ancient Order of the Hibernians (A.O.H) and the Orangmen both started at Smith College as secret societies in the late 19th century and carried a rivalry with one another until secret societies were stopped at Smith by President Davis in 1948, though both groups continued activities into the early 1960s [1]. A member of the Class of 1895 who was an original member of the A.O.H stated that she believed the group was founded during her sophomore year of college, but the College Archives finding aid states the group was founded in 1890 [2]. The College Archives also place the Orangemen’s founding, the rival society of the AOH, in 1890 [3]. The A.O.H was based on an Irish Roman Catholic fraternal order, the Ancient Order of the Hibernians while the Orangemen were based on an Irish Protestant group, the Loyal Orange Association. Both of the original groups dated back quite a bit, the Hibernians going back to the 1500s and the Orangemen dating back to 1795 Ireland [4]. The Ancient Order of the Hibernians was the biggest Irish fraternal order in the US and was made up by “practicing Catholics of Irish descent.” [5] 

In her recollections of the A.O.H, Alice Martin Turner ‘95, an original founding member stated that the group wrote to the National Ancient Order of the Hibernians “suggesting that we join their organization,” but were rejected as the Order only accepted men.[6] Around the same time that Smithies boldly wrote this letter to the national A.O.H, the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Ancient Order of the Hibernians (LAAOH) formed in 1894. The LAAOH “fought to build up the order, even as men resisted their involvement, and that they did not shy away from exercising political influence.”[7] Still, the Smith students sought to be a part of the A.O.H, they seemingly did not have an interest in being part of a women’s auxiliary. 

This does bring to mind questions about the intent of the A.O.H at Smith College, did they want to follow the lead of the national organization and promote their causes, or did they simply appropriate the name for their own use? 

What does that say about these students at Smith College, which had just been recently founded?  

 

The A.O.H was dedicated as a society to “the maintenance of devilish wit and the promotion of hellish spirit in the college.” [8] They were intent in their rebellion as an organization, operating as a secret society and as an unsanctioned branch of a group only for men. The A.O.H kept a scrapbook, conducted initiations for new members, and was seemingly well known at Smith as they appear in the yearbooks and there are articles about them in Smith College Associated News documenting their activities and the ensuing controversies about them. [9] 

What does the creation of this group say about the early years of Smith College students? How did the identity of the group seem to shift over time based on these pictures?

The Orangemen did similar activities as the A.O.H. They wrote songs and also wore their cloaks to parade around campus in orange hats.[10] The cloaks are visible in the picture below. 

Similar to the A.O.H, in 1986 a former Orangemen member wrote about her memories of the Orangemen and how the archivists at Smith College were collecting information about the society. She stated, “we had fun but it was all nonsense.”[11]

What does it mean for these secret societies to be documented in the institutional archives and in mainstream Smith College publications? Are they still a secret?

The Orangemen and A.O.H also kept up a rivalry between themselves for years. In 1944, the Orangemen stole the A.O.H scrapbook and left their graffiti on it to note that they had overtaken the A.O.H in this way. Both groups were ended at the same time by President Davis, but coexisted in what the Smith College Archives calls an “intense rivalry” and an “intense but friendly competition.” [12] 

How does the presence of these groups for close to 60 years of Smith College’s history change or affirm your preconceived notions of early Smith College students? Does this change how you view early Smithies? Are you surprised by this history?

Endnotes

1.  “Collection: Ancient Order of Hibernians Records,” Smith College Finding Aids, accessed March 3, 2022, https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/4/resources/145; “Orangemen, C1908-1936, 1986 | Smith College Finding Aids,” accessed March 27, 2022, https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/4/archival_objects/14825.
2. Alice Martin Turner ’95 to “Nan” December 29, 1961, Correspondence, St. Patrick’s Day Letters, 1926-1956, undated, Ancient Order of the Hibernians Records, Box 3011.1, College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, MA; “Collection: Ancient Order of Hibernians Records,” Smith College Finding Aids, accessed March 3, 2022, https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/4/resources/145. 
3. “Orangemen, C1908-1936, 1986 | Smith College Finding Aids.”
4. “Orangemen, C1908-1936, 1986 | Smith College Finding Aids”; “Collection: Ancient Order of Hibernians Records.”
5. Tara M McCarthy, “A Monumental Mission: The Ancient Order of Hibernians Women and the Construction of History, 1894–1918” 16 (2021): 4.
6. Alice Martin Turner ’95 to “Nan” December 29, 1961, Correspondence, St. Patrick’s Day Letters, 1926-1956, undated, Ancient Order of the Hibernians Records, Box 3011.1, College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
7.  McCarthy, “A Monumental Mission: The Ancient Order of Hibernians Women and the Construction of History, 1894–1918,” 3.
8. “Collection: Ancient Order of Hibernians Records.”
9. “Collection: Ancient Order of Hibernians Records”; Examples: “Secret Societies to Continue; To Take Only Upperclassmen,” Smith College Associated News, September 24, 1943, Vol 39, no 2 edition, Smith College Weekly 34 1943-1944 Bound; Smith College, Class of 1904 Classbook (Smith College, 1904), 67–69, http://archive.org/details/class1904smit.
10. “Orangemen, C1908-1936, 1986 | Smith College Finding Aids.”
11. Martha Housen McCrea ’25 to Mary Foss Hamann ’25, November 20, 1986. Orangemen Correspondence, 1941-86, Student Club and Organizations, Box 3004.4, College Archives.
12. “Orangemen, C1908-1936, 1986 | Smith College Finding Aids”; “Collection: Ancient Order of Hibernians Records.”

Annotated Bibliography

McCarthy, Tara M. “A Monumental Mission: The Ancient Order of Hibernians Women and the Construction of History, 1894–1918” 16 (2021): 21.

This article was utilized in this exhibit. It is about the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Ancient Order of the Hibernians. As noted, the Smith chapter was not a Ladies’ Auxiliary, which is interesting and this article will help illuminate what opportunities were available to other women in this group and to understand how it operated for women. 

Crane, Mackenzie. “The Tap: An Examination of the Controversy of Secret Societies on College Campuses.” M.Ed., University of South Carolina. Accessed February 23, 2022. https://www.proquest.com/docview/1686533113/abstract/D4670441DD84592PQ/1. 

This article is useful for understanding secret societies. Crane defines secret societies, “A collegiate secret society refers to an intentional, persistent social network of students and alumni whose activities (Erickson, 1981), purposes, and sometimes membership (“Secret society”, 2013) are revealed only to those who belong. Entrance to such organizations is by invitation only, as opposed to by free choice by any interested party. Therefore, they maintain an inherent exclusionary quality (Graebner, 1987). These groups are characterized by a profound confidence among members that secret proceedings will be fiercely guarded from those outside the group (Hazelrigg, 1969)(Crane 1).”

Clawson, Mary Ann. “Nineteenth-Century Women’s Auxiliaries and Fraternal Orders.” Signs 12, no. 1 (1986): 40–61. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3174356. 

While not utilized in this exhibit, this article is about fraternal orders. This is useful in understanding fraternal orders and their relationships to women, although it does not include the Ancient Order of the Hibernians. Clawson defines fraternal orders: “1) Fraternal orders are fictive kinship groups, which conceive of themselves as brotherhoods. (2) They use ritual, especially that of the initiation rite, to construct and sustain the fraternal bond. (3) They typically exclude women from membership and make this exclusion a central part of their organizational identity” (41).

Further Research

Ancient Order of the Hibernians Records. College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, MA, https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/4/resources/145/collection_organization. 

Cuomo, Rosalind S. “Very Special Circumstances :: Women’s Colleges and Women’s Friendships at the Turn of the Century.” University of Massachuesetts, 1988. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2566&context=theses. 

Domagal, Jennifer. “Keeping Secrets: Student Secret Societies in Historical Context.” The Vermont Connection 23, no. 1 (2002). https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/tvc/vol23/iss1/6/?utm_source=scholarworks.uvm.edu%2Ftvc%2Fvol23%2Fiss1%2F6&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages.

Gastellum, Melissa. “Girls Just Want to Have Fun: A Brief Overview of Two Secret Societies at Smith.” Class: Forms of Writing, December 12, 1944. Box 1. Undergraduate Research Papers Collection.

Horowitz, Helen Lefknowitz. Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women’s Colleges from Their Nineteenth Century Beginnings to the 1930s. 2nd ed. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993.

“Omega Society, c1910.”  Student Clubs and Organizations, Box: 3004.4. College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063. https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/4/archival_objects/14823. 

Orangemen, c1908-1936, 1986. Student Club and Organizations, Box 3004.4. College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, MA. https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/4/archival_objects/14825.

“Phi Beta Kappa, 1972.” Student Clubs and Organizations, Box: 3004.4. College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063. https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/4/archival_objects/14832 

Piper, P. P. “Secret Societies in Women’s Colleges.” Harper’s Bazaar. New York, United States: Hearst Magazine Media, Inc, October 1901. https://www.proquest.com/docview/1914175811/abstract/D184397D7A8C4EA1PQ/1.

Smith College Finding Aids. https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/4/archival_objects/14825

SCAN (), 1940-1952.  Student Publications and Student Publications Records. College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, MA. https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/4/archival_objects/411990 

Smith College Finding Aids. “Collection: Ancient Order of Hibernians Records.” Accessed March 3, 2022. https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/4/resources/145.

“Thistle Club, 1930s.” Student Clubs and Organizations, Box: 3004.8. College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063. https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/4/archival_objects/14902. 

“Thistle Club-Tartan and Cap, undated.”  Student Clubs and Organizations, Box: 3004.8. College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063. https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/4/archival_objects/14903 

McCarthy, Tara M. “A Monumental Mission: The Ancient Order of Hibernians Women and the Construction of History, 1894–1918” 16 (2021): 21.

“Orangemen, C1908-1936, 1986 | Smith College Finding Aids.” Accessed March 27, 2022. https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/4/archival_objects/14825.

“Senior Members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Smith College Class Book, 1905. · Smith Libraries Exhibits.” Accessed February 11, 2022. https://libex.smith.edu/omeka/items/show/361.

Smith College Associated News. “Secret Societies to Continue; To Take Only Upperclassmen.” September 24, 1943, Vol 39, no 2 edition. Smith College Weekly 34 1943-1944 Bound.

Smith College. Class of 1904 Classbook. Smith College, 1904. http://archive.org/details/class1904smit.

“Smith College Libraries.” Internet Archive. https://archive.org/browse.php?field=subject&mediatype=texts&collection=smithcollege