roadsTaken: History

This article was developed as part of the “roadsTaken”  project, which documents the history of highway planning, construction, and displacement in Houston, Texas.

‘A Valuable Tool’: Highway Planning and Displacement in Houston

This section attempts to answer the project’s central research question: Why were Houston’s freeways built where they are?

The newly released highway database published by roadsTaken connects the proposed “Race Restriction Areas” from the 1929 Houston City Planning Commission to the eventual routes of the city’s urban freeways, adopted two decades later. The city planners’ strategy for segregation relied on “mutual agreement,” reducing the size of certain Black neighborhoods while expanding others, and noting that transportation infrastructure such as railroads can serve as “natural lines of demarcation.”^[1] As the Houston freeway system was planned and developed over the next two decades, highways replaced bayous and railroads as the main lines segregating neighborhoods. They also simultaneously were built to clear city blocks that had “deteriorated into slum areas,” according to Texas Highway Department planners.^[2] The consequences of highway displacement significantly reshaped the geographical landscape for both white and Black communities in Houston.

By first placing Houston in a national context, this section demonstrates how the decision to bring highways into central business districts inevitably led to significant displacement of minority populations in nearly every major U.S. urban area. Within this context, Texas and Houston planners designed urban freeways with two main objectives: to build an efficient automobile-centered transportation network and clear unwanted neighborhoods at the same time. As a result, Houston’s all-white city planners and all-white city government, supported by federal policy and national planning trends, created a highway system that disproportionally displaced Black and low-income residents.^[3]

National Context: Freeway Planners’ Goals and Influences 

Over 100 years ago, architects and city designers sought to create elegant, efficient, and modern transportation systems, often featuring radial and loop roadway designs (Figure 1).^[4] Houston — with only floodplains and small bayous restricting urban development — provided highway designers a blank canvas for plotting the city’s expressways.

Figure 1 — Theoretical Diagram of the Plan of Paris (1905)

 

The interwar federal government saw the twin trends of urbanization and rapid growth of automobile use on the horizon. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal administration outlined a plan for a national highway system in two key documents: “Toll Roads and Free Roads” (1939) and “Interregional Highways” (1944). In addition to presenting statistics on the gridlocked, haphazard, and dangerous urban road system unequipped to deal with modern automobile traffic, these memorandums urged planners to design and build major off-grade arterial highways.^[6] The 1939 report described the “fringe” areas of downtowns as “decadent,” meaning decaying or declining, and referred to these zones as a city’s “slum–a blight near its very core!”^[7] The 1944 follow-up reinforced the idea that urban highways should connect existing rural highways to the “focal point” of central business districts, which were already at risk of depreciation.^[8] Surrounding downtown areas was a ring of “rundown buildings” and “slum areas” with a secondary ring of the city in a partial state of “depreciation” that was at risk of becoming “part of the city’s slums.”^[9] With encouragement from the federal government, local planners conceptualized freeways as tools to modernize traffic flows and remove buildings, blocks, and neighborhoods deemed “blighted.”

Figure 2 — ‘Plate 50 — A Decadent Area Fringing a City Business Section’

 

Figure 3 — Location Opportunities for Arterial Highways

 

Since Texas and Houston planners were deeply involved in the national community of highway engineers — attending conferences from San Francisco to Detroit throughout the pre-World War II era — it is understandable that they would take these national ideas to heart.^[12] The theoretical map by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) shows the ideal routing of an urban freeway through the maximum amount of a neighborhood labeled “D - Decadent” (Figure 3).^[13] Planners were also acutely aware of the consequences of routing freeways through these areas, particularly the displacement of residents. By the early 1960s, the AASHO estimated that “a quarter-million urban families will have been displaced as a result of the urban renewal, highway and other public improvement programs.”^[14] Engineers viewed highway-construction displacement as similar to displacement from the construction and creation of public housing, parks, and other infrastructure projects. The dual push to create urban freeways to link city centers and conduct urban renewal meant that any neighborhood deemed undesirable by city halls could be in a highway’s crosshairs. The AASHO, with Texas’ State Highway Engineer Dewitt C. Greer serving on its executive committee, argued this exact point: “Many cities have blighted areas slated for redevelopment. Where they are near general desire lines of travel, arterial routes might be located through them in coordination with slum clearance and redevelopment programs. In other instances, the location of a highway through a blighted district may instigate plans for its redevelopment. In some cities blighted areas adjacent to the central business district are good locations for inner belts.”^[15]

This vision of arterial and concentric limited-access highways, combined with the ability to clear or isolate blighted, slum, and “decadent” Houston neighborhoods, led to a clear highway design strategy: Clear large sections of “decay and blight” near the city center, build parking and civic institutions downtown, construct large radial freeways through partially dilapidated residential and light industrial zones, and build a ring road connecting and promoting new, upper-income developments.^[16] Houston was not alone in following this pattern, and the strategy was not constrained to Texas or the South. Cities such as Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Pittsburgh, St. Paul, and many others adopted similar plans. Planners in these cities agreed on the supremacy of single-use urban districts, the benefits of residential neighborhoods primarily composed of single-family homes for social and psychological stability, and the need to solve present and future traffic congestion. They also concurred with local business elites on the importance of supporting the central business district as a city’s economic focal point.^[17]

Following World War II, many cities, including Houston, experienced a surge in limited-access road building, a practice pioneered by Robert Moses in New York. To aid in these endeavors, engineers developed maps of “desire lines” — which depicted the origins and destinations of people within a given area. They also conducted traffic counts, including one from 1936 in Harris County, to better understand and optimize the flows of automobiles.^[18] Initially, urban freeway construction represented a small portion of federal expenditures on roads after the war. However, a decade later, officials in Washington were surprised to find that highway spending in urban areas constituted the majority of federal highway dollars.^[19]

Local Context: Pre-War Houston Planning

It is a common misconception that the federal highway legislation of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s was imposed on cities against their will. In Houston, local government planners were responsible for designing the map of the urban freeway system, largely unencumbered by federal or state interference. They acquired the right-of-way lines and, along with Harris County, funded the first decade of highway construction before federal aid began.^[20] Long before the advent of limited-access freeways, Houston’s all-white planners had extensive experience using public projects to target poor and minority neighborhoods. Houston planners were keenly aware of the city’s racial and economic geography, down to the block.[21] They knew which neighborhoods could be cleared under the guise of “blight removal,” as seen with the Black neighborhood that was cleared for the city’s civic center and City Hall in the 1930s (Figure 4). After the war, these same planners, or their protégés, continued this practice, empowered by increased funding and public support to design Houston’s freeway network.

Figure 4 — Plate Depicting Rusk Avenue in Downtown Houston From the 1913 City Plan

 

The photograph in Figure 4 shows a Houston street that is now in the middle of Tranquility Park, with City Hall, a federal courthouse, and a performing arts venue within a one-block radius. In 1913, city planners marked this street and the Black neighborhood to its south as part of Houston’s earliest attempt at comprehensive city planning. The Houston Park Commission hired Arthur C. Comey, a Harvard-trained landscape architect, to create the plan. Comey advocated for what would become Memorial and Hermann Parks, as well as the construction of parkways, or tree-lined express roads, along the city’s bayous. He also suggested an “encircling route” connected to the existing arterial radial streets.^[23] In addition to advocating for more transit lines along these roads, the plan included a map of the city’s racial geography, distinguishing between commercial areas and private property, with the latter subdivided into “white” and “colored.” It also marked sites for parks, a civic center, and an expansion of a bayou bridge in predominantly Black urban spaces in need of revitalization — a trend that continued in later planning documents (Figure 5).^[24]

Figure 5 — 1913 Map With Parkways Highlighted (Top Left), 1913 Racial Distribution Map (Top Right), and Photographs of the Fifth and First Wards From the 1913 City Plan (Bottom)

 

However, the onset of World War I and subsequent political jockeying delayed many of Comey’s proposals in the 1913 city plan. After the Texas Legislature passed a bill favorable to city planning, a new class of city leaders, typified by figures like William Clifford Hogg, advocated for a new comprehensive city plan. Under Hogg’s leadership, the newly constituted City Planning Commission recruited the accomplished architectural firm Hare & Hare — known for designing the city’s civic center and numerous projects throughout Texas — along with Lewis B. Ryon, Jr., the commission’s city planning engineer, to create the city plan.^[25] Hare & Hare were also known for developing the master plan of Fort Worth, subdividing the wealthy River Oaks neighborhood for Hogg, and planning public housing projects for Houston. They would later employ and train Ralph Ellifrit, Houston’s first city planning director and the designer of Houston’s first two decades of freeway plans.^[26] Ryon, meanwhile, was a popular professor of civil engineering at the Rice Institute and the first mayor of West University Place.

The resulting 1929 report, authored by Hare & Hare and Ryon, was of “unprecedented breadth and scope” for Houston. It included comprehensive zoning recommendations, improvements to parks and schools, transit planning, street widening, parking enhancements, and more.^[27] According to the authors, the major street plan was the “framework” upon which the rest of the city’s planning efforts were built.

Figure 6 — Report of the City Planning Commission, Houston, Texas, 1929, ‘Race Distribution’ and ‘Proposed Race Restriction Areas’

 

The 1929 plan also included proposals for increased racial segregation with two accompanying maps.^[29] According to Hare & Hare and Ryon, “The chief racial problem centers about the negroes.”^[30] The commission states that Black Houstonians were “a necessary and useful element in the population” while also noting that recent population data showed that white Houstonians had grown to be a much larger majority in the city. The plan emphasized that Black Houstonians needed to live near white districts in order to work as domestics.^[31]The commission argued that “it is best for both races that living areas be segregated.” However, since “segregation by zoning has been proven unconstitutional,” the commission suggested that segregation must be accomplished through “mutual agreement.”^[32]

The authors of the 1929 plan had ample experience planning this type of exclusionary local politics. Hogg, Ryon, S. Herbert Hare, and other planners discussed new laws from the Texas Legislature that allowed cities to enact segregating ordinances and concluded that any attempt at “race segregation by zoning” would be struck down by the courts.^[33] They understood that deed restrictions, real estate practices, economic inequality, public transportation segregation laws, and local attitudes could accomplish what municipal decree could not. The Hare & Hare firm was also familiar with both segregated planning and Houston, having designed parts of Bellaire, Meyerland, Houston’s civic center, and facilities in Emancipation Park.^[34] Ryon had experience with segregationist policies as well. He co-founded West University Place, where homeowners “were not to convey any portion of the property to any person except of the Caucasian race.”^[35] These deed restrictions were common in Houston (Figure 6) and were not outlawed until passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. According to the 1950 census lists, only 47 non-white residents lived in West University Place out of a total population of 17,136.^[36]

While Houston planners understood that race segregation through zoning would not stand, Hogg noted, “[that] does not keep us from planning [the] ideal layout.”^[37] Hogg asked S. Herbert Hare to map out “bounds for these colored districts…beyond which the colored population will not undertake to encroach.” Hare replied, “I believe your scheme of voluntary segregation of the races is the only feasible way of handling that problem, and I hope it can be worked out. I believe that values resulting from some of the street openings and other improvements proposed in connection with the city plan will tend to drive the colored population out of some of the localities now occupied by them.”^[38] Public road and infrastructure building, along with legal deed restrictions, could create the commission’s ideal segregated city (Figure 6).

Figure 7 — 1929 Major Street Plan

 

The 1929 final report discussed the primary areas of Black settlement in Houston, specifically the San Felipe District (also known as the Fourth Ward or Freedman’s Town), the southeast district (the Third Ward), and the Fifth Ward.^[39] It noted that the Fourth Ward, being “closest to the business center” and made up of “very poor homes,” would be significantly impacted by the street plan. Specifically, it stated that the street plan will “encroach on this district and may tend to reduce it in size.”^[40] The report went further, suggesting that the district be truncated and geographically reduced by more than 50%, although “at least a portion of the district should be retained for negro use, but the housing facilities and living conditions should be investigated and some measure taken to improve them.”^[41] This strategy is best illustrated by a pair of maps produced by Hare & Hare and Ryon, which illustrate the reduction of the San Felipe District (Figure 8).^[42]

Figure 8 — San Felipe District and the Proposed Race Restriction Area

 

The comprehensive zoning law, the crowning jewel of the 1929 city plan, was derailed by Clarence Ray Wharton’s single-issue organization, the Houston Property Owners League, along with pressure from other prominent businessmen like John H. Kirby. However, the city still pursued the “Proposed Race Restriction” in the Fourth Ward through a variety of targeted public projects.^[44] 

In the 1930s, the construction of the civic center and City Hall led to the demolition of three blocks along the bayou in the northeast. In the late 1930s and 1940s, the whites-only San Felipe Courts housing project removed 22 blocks north of West Dallas Street. By 1952, the construction of what would become Interstate 45 removed 17 blocks on either side of the Sabine bridge along Heiner Street.^[45] Within 15 years of the highway’s completion, private commercial development, mostly in the form of parking lots, eliminated the rest of the eastern half of the Black Fourth Ward, including its most important commercial and cultural landmarks, such as the Carnegie Colored Library, the Supreme Home of Ancient Order Pilgrims, and the original location of Booker T. Washington High School.^[46] The roadsTaken database shows that almost all of the homes in the highway’s path along the proposed Race Restriction Area line through the Fourth Ward were occupied by Black Houstonians.^[47] It is evident that the city of Houston’s efforts to reduce the Fourth Ward were underway before the highway’s construction, but for city planners, highway construction displacement had become an additional tool in their urban renewal toolbox — with severe negative effects on Black communities.

Black Houstonians were not unaware of the city’s plans. Hogg, Ryon, and the City Planning Commission enlisted prominent Black citizens to conduct an “Interracial Housing Survey” as part of the planning process. J. M. Burr, the editor-manager of the Houston Sentinel, a weekly Black newspaper, noted “the innumerable phone calls” he received about the new city plan.^[48] C. H. McGruder, the Grand Secretary of the United Brothers of Friendship, a Black fraternal organization, voiced the concerns of his workers that their labor on the “Survey of the Negro Population” would be used against them by the city: “Will this Survey lay the foundation for a City Ordinance that will provide for the segregation of the Negro Population? Will this Survey result in the adoption of an Ordinance that will require the Colored population of the 4^th. Ward to sacrifice their homes at prices fixed directly or indirectly by the Municipality?”^[49] Neither Burr nor McGruder received a reply from Hogg answering their concerns.

Turning to the rest of the city, the 1929 city plan highlights “two other important negro districts,” noting that both are “subject to expansion and satisfactory development.” The Race Restriction Area map shows the elimination of the northern section of the Third Ward, with the boundary following the Galveston interurban railroad line. The commission states that “in some cases railroads form natural lines of demarcation.” Fewer than two decades later, the Gulf Freeway was built along this same right-of-way, displacing homes that were predominantly occupied by Black residents.^[50]

At the time of the freeway’s construction, the northern section of the Third Ward was home to over 5,000 Black Houstonians. However, by 1980, this number had declined to fewer than 2,000, even as the Third Ward expanded south and west with over 10,000 Black residents and many more moving to neighborhoods south of Brays Bayou.^[51] A similar phenomenon reduced the Black population in parts of the Firth Ward, as the construction of the U.S. 59 and I-10 interchange in the heart of this neighborhood led to the demolition of over 2,000 structures.^[52]

Although the 1929 city plan does not specifically mention the recently incorporated Independence Heights or smaller Black neighborhoods, they were clearly mapped with boundaries extending toward the city center — boundaries that would become highways within two decades (Figure 9). The highway planners’ two goals — building a modern freeway system and continuing a local and national policy of “blight clearance” in Black communities — were proving to be compatible. 

Houston Planners Design the Freeways

The approach of using highways as tools for urban renewal reached its apex when Ellifrit was appointed Houston’s city planning engineer in 1940.^[53]A Hare & Hare employee who originally moved from Kansas City to manage the firm’s Houston branch, Ellifrit would go on to helm the city planning department for over two decades. Although Hogg died in 1930, the team of planners he assembled would continue his vision for Houston.^[54] Ellifrit worked under S. Herbert Hare’s supervision on planning Cuney Homes in the Third Ward and considered Hogg “the greatest citizen that Houston has ever had.”^[55] Under Ellifrit’s leadership, the city designed and then completed most of the major plans for Houston’s urban freeways network. According to Ellifrit, Houston “had more influence on the location of its freeways than almost any other city in dealing with the Highway Department” adding, “We did the original layout of the freeway system ahead of the Highway Department.”^[56] This was not surprising, since the city had already designed a new freeway system using parts of the earlier plans and was ready to build when the bond money or federal grants arrived to pay the bill. Together with Texas Highway Department officials, Ellifrit continued to direct freeway planning and routes through the plan’s final major alignment change in 1963.^[57]

Ellifrit was familiar with public projects that caused mass displacement even before the construction of urban freeways. Buffalo Drive (now known as Allen Parkway) was built through the Fourth Ward in the 1920s to connect the wealthy neighborhood of River Oaks to downtown.^[58] During Ellifrit’s tenure at the city, the Housing Authority of the City of Houston built San Felipe Courts, a white-only public housing project, across the northern half of the Fourth Ward, displacing around 22 blocks primarily occupied by Black Houstonians.^[59]Fourth Ward homeowners and community leaders like Carter Walker Wesley protested both the price offered for their homes and the location of a white-only project in a neighborhood that was “95 per cent negroes.” The community hired a lawyer to lobby Washington, recruited young white progressives to their cause, and sent Reverand L.S. White to city hall to attempt to halt the project.^[60] 

Houston Mayor Oscar Holcombe said, “the city council could do nothing about the matter as it had no jurisdiction over the location of federal projects.”^[61] Ellifrit, however, knew exactly why the San Felipe Courts were built over the Fourth Ward. When asked the reason behind their location, he replied that it was “to eliminate that terrible slum.”^[62] He referenced a brothel operated by Josie and Addie Sasser, a pair of Black madams, that had officially ceased operations before he was even born.^[63] This institutional and government memory of Black neighborhoods remained in the thinking of Ellifrit and other planners throughout the early decades of highway construction. Ellifrit described the area of the Fourth Ward, in the following terms:

“Yes, it was one of the worst blighted areas that I have ever seen. There were shacks just literally built on dump and I walked through that area, uh, I think one of the main reasons was to try to eliminate that terrible slum area. It was as bad a blighted area as I have ever seen. There is nothing in Houston like it today and and over from it, about where the city’s barn is now, was Addie Sasser’s place which is a house of ill repute, two story, big square house with a big fence around it, kept just perfect condition, just absolute contrast to this terrible slum. I mean they weren’t just run-down dwellings, they were shacks, they were people just living in things like you see pictures of ’em living in uh in Vietnam, parts of Vietnam, places like that, that just unbelievable, around Singapore.”^[64]

While historical maps of the area do show smaller than average houses in the area Ellifrit describes, they also depict large multistory residences and stores.^[65]However, the view of Black neighborhoods that Ellifrit inherited from both his time working with Hare & Hare and from broader national views of blight and urban renewal, would influence where Houston’s highways were placed. Under Ellifrit’s leadership, that view became a reality.

During the freeway placement process, few citizens made their way to City Hall to protest. This is not surprising since the majority of displaced individuals were renters who often found out about their displacement only after surveyors arrived at their homes.^[66] Public discourse was mostly limited to debate within City Hall.^[67] Other than a petition from businesses along the south edge of the central business district and a letter signed by residents from the east side of town in the 1950s, there is little record of organized protests against highway construction until 1973.

Reflecting on his career as Houston’s first highway architect, Ellifrit discussed the location of Houston’s downtown ring of highways, noting that “it was finally realized that in order to build a system, there was no way to get one that would not skirt the downtown district.”^[68] The area that Ellifrit is referring to was across the street from and part of the same community he had earlier described as a “terrible slum.” In Ellifrit’s mind, the nationwide pressure to build freeways through dense urban areas to reach central business districts was closely associated with slum clearance.

It was this same mind that plotted Houston’s highways and created a vision that was rarely challenged. The only times Ellifrit and the city did not get their way was when they were thwarted by civic leaders — such as Hugh Potter, who curtailed the construction of Allen Parkway through River Oaks — or through inter-governmental double-crosses, as when the Texas Highway Department built its district headquarters in the planned path of the Katy Freeway, forcing a reroute through part of Memorial Park.^[69]

Figure 9 — 1949 Proposed Freeway Plan (Red) Overlaid on the 1929 Race Restriction Areas Map (Black)

 

Ellifrit’s 1942 Major Street Plan, the 1946 Major Thoroughfare Plan, and the 1949 Proposed Freeway map, which introduced modern expressways, were all built upon the foundation laid by Hare & Hare and Ryon’s 1929 planning report.^[70] The legacy of earlier plans for neighborhood separation, slum clearance, and racial restriction continued in Ellifrit’s designs (Figure 9). The new urban freeways mapped in Figure 9 — which included all extant urban highways until the publication of the 1955 Major Thoroughfare and Freeway Plan — followed the ideal design of radial arteries and circumferential roads discussed earlier. These ideas were combined with new technological innovations in efficiency, speed, and safety pioneered by Texas Highway Department engineer-manager William James Van London.^[71] Gone from these new maps were the parkway loops along bayous and parks. Instead, wide expressways were routed through residential and light commercial areas, connecting to the city’s center and extending to rural highways and other major cities.^[72]

Right-of-way costs were always a pressing concern to planners, and Houston’s freeway plan intersected with other government programs that had already depreciated property values. The 1949 Proposed Freeways map aligns closely with neighborhoods of low property value if plotted on top of the 1930s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) map of Houston, commonly known as a “redlining map.” Almost all the structures initially located in the path of the proposed highway were in neighborhoods labeled as “Definitely Declining” (C or yellow) or “Hazardous” (D or red).^[73] The only exceptions were 33 structures in the “Still Desirable” (B or blue) neighborhood of Park Place. No structures from this initial highway plan were located in neighborhoods deemed “Best” (A or green) (Figure 10).^[74] This suggests that Houston’s initial freeways were deliberately planned through less desirable and lower-value neighborhoods.

Figure 10 — 1949 Proposed Freeway Map (Black) Overlaid on the 1930s HOLC (Color)

 

Conclusion: The ‘Tool’ Reshapes Houston

Ellifrit retired from the city planning department in 1963, but before his departure, two more urban expressways were added to Houston’s master plan in 1955: the Southwest and South Freeways. However, Ellifrit’s 1963 freeway plan marked the last major change to urban highway alignment plans, and by 1968, the government had acquired almost all properties within the right-of-way of Houston’s freeways.^[75]

In 1968, J.C. Dingwall, who was previously the director of construction for Houston’s first modern superhighway, the Gulf Freeway, took over as head of the Texas Highway Department. Dingwall would later go on to head the American Association of State Highway Officials, whose maps and best practices were examined earlier.^[76] In his new role in Austin, he continued championing the benefits of highways to clear unwanted parts of cities: “Frequently the central business district of a city is surrounded by a belt of land suffering from urban blight. Often such land served as good residential neighborhoods at one time, but later deteriorated into slum areas. It is important to remember that urban highways can be a valuable tool in rehabilitating such slum areas. The clearing away of unsafe and unsanitary buildings makes the adjacent land eligible for better use. The problem arises in finding a place for the residents of these areas to go. Too often they cannot find adequate housing at prices or rents they can afford.”^[77]

Empowered by the nationwide push for modern highways, Houston city planners created a new form of transportation infrastructure that perpetuated policies of segregation and displacement. RoadsTaken’s highway database reveals that Black Houstonians were disproportionately displaced (see next section, “Consequences”). Whether this was driven by a desire for “urban renewal” in Black neighborhoods or by indifference to a community lacking influence among the city’s white technocrats — or perhaps a combination of both — is difficult to determine. Records from the Houston Planning Department that could have provided more insight were either destroyed, lost, or never archived.^[78]

As the city of Houston continued to demolish Black neighborhoods deemed undesirable, highways became the most “valuable tool” for such efforts, replacing the role of parks, housing projects, and other public works — long before the federal government or the state got involved. Houston’s highway planners, like Ellifrit, were trained within and embraced the ideas of the national community of urban planners, especially regarding the use of highways as both an efficient transportation infrastructure and a method of urban renewal.

Click here for the full-view version of the “roadsTaken” interactive map and database of Houston’s highway displacement.

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Notes

^[1] Report of the City Planning Commission, Houston, Texas, 1929, Folder: 41, James R. Sims papers, 1924–2002, MS 0596, Woodson Research Center, Rice University, Houston, Texas, 25, https://archives.library.rice.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/93652.

^[2] J.C. Dingwall, “Topical Outline (Not a Finished Speech),” 1968 Original Speeches, Texas Highway Department, Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Box 2002/101-116, https://txarchives.org/tslac/finding_aids/20178.xml.

^[3] See the next section, “Consequences,” for a discussion of disproportionality in highway displacement.

^[4] Joseph F. DiMento and Cliff Ellis, Changing Lanes: Visions and Histories of Urban Freeways (MIT Press, 2013), 10–4, https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9374.001.0001.

^[5] Daniel H. Burnham, “Theoretical Diagram, Paris,” Report on a Plan for San Francisco by Daniel H. Burnham, 1905, David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries, https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~354997~1120378.

^[6] Toll Roads and Free Roads, Public Roads, vol. 20 (U.S. Federal Highway Administration, Office of Research and Development, 1939), 93, https://enotrans.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/membersOnly-1939-Toll-Roads-and-Free-Roads.compressed.pdf.

^[7] Toll Roads and Free Roads, 94–5.

^[8] Interregional Highways, Report of National Interregional Highway Committee, Congressional Document, 1944, 53, https://enotrans.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/membersOnly-1944-Interregional-Highways.pdf.

^[9] Interregional Highways, 53.

^[10] Toll Roads and Free Roads.

^[11] American Association of State Highway Officials, A Policy On Arterial Highways In Urban Areas, 1957, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/wu.89042696070?urlappend=%3Bseq=117%3Bownerid=13510798895884298-131.

^[12] Texas Archival Resources Online, “Texas Department of Transportation Highway Department Historical Records: An Inventory of the Department of Transportation Highway Department Historical Records at the Texas State Archives, 1911–1993, bulk 1927–1960,” American Association of State Highway Officials correspondence, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Boxes 2002/101–1, 2002/101–2, 2002/101–3, https://txarchives.org/tslac/finding_aids/19001.xml.

^[13] The American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) was renamed American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) in 1973 (AASHO, A Policy On Arterial Highways In Urban Areas, [1957], 98).

^[14] The Sagamore Conference on Highways and Urban Development: Guidelines for Action, (Syracuse University, 1958), 23–4.

^[15] AASHO, 89.

^[16] The Sagamore Conference on Highways and Urban Development, 11.

^[17] Mark H. Rose and Raymond A. Mohl, Interstate: Highway Politics and Policy Since 1939, (University of Tennessee Press, 2012), 55–67.

^[18] Alan. A. Altshuler, “The Intercity Freeway,” in Introduction to Planning History in the United States, ed. Donald A. Krueckeberg (Center for Urban Policy Research, 1983), 195–200.

^[19] Roger Biles, The Fate of Cities: Urban America and the Federal Government, 1945–2000 (University Press of Kansas, 2011), 73–6; John H. Mollenkopf, The Contested City (Princeton University Press, 1983), 119.

^[20] Ralph Ellifrit, interviewed by Louis Marchiafava, Houston History Research Center (HHRC) Oral History Collection, Houston Public Library Special Collections, September 26, 1979, https://cdm17006.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p17006coll119/id/602/rec/1.

^[21] Matt Drwenski, Uilvim Ettore Gardin Franco, and Bruno Sousa, “roadsTaken: The History of Highway Displacement in Houston,” Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, https://www.bakerinstitute.org/roads-taken.

^[22] Arthur Coleman Comey, “Houston: Tentative Plans for Its Development,” Report to the Houston Park Commission (Press of Geo. H. Ellis Company, 1913).

^[23] Peter C. Papademetriou, Transportation and Urban Development in Houston, 1830–1980 (Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, 1982), 29.

^[24] Comey.

^[25] Archie Henderson, “City Planning in Houston, 1920–30,” The Houston Review, 113, https://houstonhistorymagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/9.3-City-Planning-In-Houston-1920-1930-Archie-Henderson.pdf.

^[26] “Planning the City: An Interview with Ralph Ellifrit,” Houston Magazine, Winter 1981, 206, https://houstonhistorymagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Planning-the-City-An-Interview-with-Ralph-Ellifrit.pdf.

^[27] Henderson, 133.

^[28]The City Plan of Houston (The City Planning Commission, 1929), City Planning Department, City of Houston, RG A 0004, HHRC, Houston Public Library.

^[29] Drwenski, Gardin Franco, and Sousa.

^[30] The spelling “about” instead of “around” is as the source material reads (The City Plan of Houston, 25).

^[31] The City Plan of Houston, 25–6.

^[32] The City Plan of Houston, 25.

^[33] Kenny England to Ethel Brosius, April 16, 1928, in Hogg Papers, City Planning 1928-1930, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, Box 2J300; “Negroes and Whites – Segregation of in Cities,” S.B. 275, Ch. 103, Texas General Special Laws 40th Regular Session, https://lrl.texas.gov/scanned/sessionLaws/40-0/SB_275_CH_103.pdf; Nathan William MacChesney to Hugh Potter, May 20, 1929, City Planning 1928–30, Box 2J300; L. B. Ryon, Jr to F. W. Turner, June 22, 1929, Hogg Papers, City Planning 1928-1930, Box 2J300.

^[34] Hare and Hare Collection. Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library, https://www.txarchives.org/houpub/finding_aids/00004.xml; Susan Allen Kline, “Hare & Hare,” Handbook of Texas Online, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/hare-hare.

^[35] June A. Begeman and Robert W. Barnett, Stepping Back in Time: History of West University Place; West University Place Historical Society; with Contributing Authors Robert W. Barnett ... [and Others], D. Armstrong, 1999. 

^[36] U.S. Census Bureau, “1950 Census, Census Tracts 408–10,” Social Explorer, https://www.socialexplorer.com/9ebe8a16f5/view.

^[37] Note to “DMP” in Hogg Papers, City Planning, Box 2J299.

^[38] S. Herbert Hare to William Clifford Hogg, May 28, 1929, in Hogg Papers, City Planning 1928–30, Box 2J300.

^[39] Drwenski, Gardin Franco, and Sousa.

^[40] Report of the City Planning Commission, 25.

^[41] Report of the City Planning Commission, 25.

^[42] The Fourth Ward continues to be the center of Houston’s Black community and history, despite its decline in population and size.

^[43] Drwenski, Gardin Franco, and Sousa.

^[44] Henderson, 134–6.

^[45] “Planning the City: An Interview with Ralph Ellifrit,” 215.

^[46] Today, Antioch Mission Baptist Church is the only remaining building of the east Fourth Ward.

^[47] Drwenski, Gardin Franco, and Sousa.

^[48] J. M. Burr to Hogg, January 11, 1928, in Hogg Papers, City Planning 1928–30, Box 2J300.

^[49] C.H. McGruder to Hogg, January 6, 1928, City Planning 1928–30, Box 2J300. 

^[50] Drwenski, Gardin Franco, and Sousa.

^[51] U.S. Census Bureau, “1950–80 Census, Census Tracts 201, 303, and 510,” Social Explorer, https://www.socialexplorer.com/9ebe8a16f5/view.

^[52] Drwenski, Gardin Franco, and Sousa.

^[53] “4 Interviewed for Position of Engineer,” Houston Chronicle (Houston, Texas), February 23, 1940: 39; Ellifrit, HHRC.

^[54] Arthur Lefevre, Jr., “Hogg, William Clifford,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed September 30, 2024, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/hogg-william-clifford.

^[55] Ellifrit, HHRC.

^[56] Ellifrit, HHRC.

^[57] Ellen Middlebrook, “Ellifritt Urges Shifting of Southwest Freeway,” Houston Post, March 4, 1959, 28.

^[58] Flori Meeks, “Allen Parkway once a two-lane road,” Chron, June 5, 2012, https://www.chron.com/news/article/allen-parkway-once-a-two-lane-road-3611196.php. 

^[59] Robert D. Bullard, Invisible Houston: The Black Experience in Boom and Bust, (Texas A&M University Press, 1987), 15; Willa Granger. "“Order, Convenience, and Beauty”: The Style, Space, and Multiple Narratives of San Felipe Courts." Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 26, no. 1 (2019): 32–47. https://dx.doi.org/10.5749/buildland.26.1.0032; Drwenski, Gardin Franco, and Sousa.

^[60] “Home Owners Protest Small Value Placed on Property by Government in Fourth Ward,” Houston Informer, March 30, 1940, 1; “Lawyer Takes Slum Clearance Fight to Capital,” Houston Post, April 21, 1940, 11; “Homeowners Mass to Fight Property Sale: Fear Ouster Would Be Prelude to Exodus of 4th Ward Negroes,” Houston Informer, April 20, 1940, 1; “Young White People Pass Resolution Denouncing White Project in 4^th Ward,” Houston Informer, June 1, 1940, 1–2.

^[61] “Homeowners Mass to Fight Property Sale.”

^[62] Ellifrit, HHRC.

^[63] Ellifrit, HHRC; Thomas Clyde Mackey, “Red Lights Out: A Legal History of Prostitution, Disorderly Houses, and Vice Districts, 1870–1917,” PhD diss., (Rice University, 1984) ; and Brian Riedel, conversation with the author, February 27, 2023.

^[64] Ellifrit, HHRC.

^[65] “Insurance Maps of Houston, Vol. 1,” Sanborn Company Map, The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas at Austin, (1907), 85, 88.

^[66] Jesse L. Buffington, “Consequences of Freeway Displacement to Urban Residents in Low Valued Housing” (Texas Transportation Institute, 1973), 96; Kyle Shelton, Power Moves: Transportation, Politics and Development in Houston, (University of Texas Press, 2017), 55, https://doi.org/10.7560/314296.

^[67] Ellifrit, HHRC.

^[68] Ellifrit, HHRC.

^[69] “Mr. [Hugh] Potter opposed the parkway coming through the corner of River Oaks. At that time, I believe it was the only piece of land that was undeveloped in that section of River Oaks … Mr. Potter because he didn't want anything to impinge on River Oaks” (“An Interview with Ralph Ellifrit,” 208).“But the district official double-crossed us on the Katy Freeway interchange at Washington Avenue. We had acquired the land for that interchange, and then the Highway Department came in and got the city, while I was in the service, to let them build their district highway office on that land. They later came back and said, “We don't have room for the freeway.” And they moved it over and took a big slice of Memorial Park” (“An Interview with Ralph Ellifrit,” 208, 213).

^[70] Papademetriou, 48–50, 75; Drwenski, Gardin Franco, and Sousa.

^[71] Tom Watson McKinney, “Superhighway Deluxe: Houston’s Gulf Freeway,” in Energy Metropolis, ed. Martin V. Melosi and Joseph A. Pratt (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), 6–11.

^[72] DiMento and Ellis, 67–73

^[73] “Robert K. Nelson et al., “Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America,” American Panorama, https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/.

^[74] Drwenski, Gardin Franco, and Sousa.

^[75] Drwenski, Gardin Franco, and Sousa.

^[76] “J.C. Dingwall,” 2007 Texas Transportation Hall of Honor Inductees, Texas A&M Transportation Institute, https://tti.tamu.edu/about/hall-of-honor/inductees/yr2007.

^[77] Dingwall, “Topical Outline (Not a Finished Speech),” 5.

^[78] Ellifrit, HHRC, transcription by Drwenski, Tape 3; investigation by author of City Planning Department storage, Fall 2022; and Jerry Wood, conversation with the author, December 13, 2023.

 

 

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