Sorting Out the New South City by Thomas W. Hanchett

Author:Thomas W. Hanchett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

NEIGHBORHOOD PLANNING, YES; CITY PLANNING, NO

Of all the proposals floated by American municipal reformers during the Progressive era, the one that Charlotteans seemed most predisposed to adopt was comprehensive urban planning. All across the United States during the 1910s and 1920s hundreds of municipalities undertook efforts to draw up city-wide plans.44 Charlotte possessed ample precedents for climbing aboard the bandwagon. For one thing, the colonial tradition of grid planning, under which government planned the extension of streets for the entire city, had remained alive in the town much longer than in many other parts of the United States, well into living memory of the Progressive generation. Even more compellingly, Charlotte in the 1910s ranked as a national leader in the practice of neighborhood planning (that suburban subset of city planning). Thanks to the accomplishments of Leigh Colyer along The Plaza and the Olmsted Brothers in Dilworth, and especially to the evangelism of John Nolen and his protégé Earle Draper in Myers Park and related projects, Charlotte could boast a collection of planned suburbs unsurpassed in any small city in America. It seemed only a small step to extend that kind of thoughtful design to the community as a whole.

In 1916, with Myers Park well under way, planner John Nolen and his patron George Stephens decided that the time was ripe for the next phase of their campaign to bring city planning to the Queen City. Stephens lobbied the Board of Aldermen and the Chamber of Commerce and convinced them to split the cost of conducting a “civic survey” of Charlotte. Nolen’s staff would carefully gather and map data on the existing city, creating the documents on which to base a city plan. To John Nolen the prospect of creating an overall design for the Queen City represented the fulfillment of a long-sought goal. “You will recall,” he wrote privately to Stephens, “how my services began there with the parks of Charlotte, passed then to a consideration of private places, then to the campaign of lecturing and speaking … and finally to the preparation of the plan for Myers Park. All of this work was done without much, or any profit, some of it at a direct loss. In other words I was a missionary.”45 Charlotte’s city plan would be a jubilant harvest after long labor in the vineyards.

Completed in September 1917, the civic survey not only summarized existing conditions but also went on to offer a preliminary sketch suggesting what a city plan for Charlotte might look like.46 A downtown “civic center” on West Trade Street would hold all the city’s municipal buildings and provide a focal point for public life. Selected streets would be widened to better connect the center city to the suburbs and mill districts. To facilitate street widening, a building code would dictate that new structures must be set back from the existing roadways. The plan recommended that the city fund additional parks on the north and west sides to balance the existing Latta Park, J. S.

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