Urban renewal and the built environment: the demolition of a San Jose neighborhood

Fifty years ago, a neighborhood in San Jose, California disappeared. The neighborhood, an enclave of second and third generation Italian and Mexican immigrants, was the unfortunate casualty of an ambitious urban renewal project. In 1960 San Jose’s City Council declared the area “blighted,” and adopted an urban renewal plan in which 224 houses, apartment buildings and retail stores were razed and replaced by sleek skyscrapers. Thirteen years after the City Council adopted the plan, the neighborhood’s blocks were utterly transformed. Such striking metamorphoses were occurring in similar fashion throughout the United States as cities struggled to deal with aging structures in their central cores. What were the consequences of the sweeping changes to San Jose’s downtown neighborhood? Displaced residents moved to different neighborhoods, sometimes with better housing choices, at other times not. Local businesses relocated or simply folded. And buildings, the focus of this study, were demolished. Some of these structures were dilapidated, while others were sound. A number of the structures were historically significant, aesthetically attractive, or simply useful. This study will examine the lost buildings in detail, to determine which of them were indeed in blighted or unsafe condition as the city claimed, and which ones had contributed significantly to the city’s historic built environment before their demise.