David Schuyler, A City Transformed: Redevelopment, Race, and Suburbanization in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1940-1980. University Park PA: Penn State Press, 2002. Photos, 278 pps., $19.95.
David Schuyler's A City Transformed is a story about the successes and failures with the redevelopment efforts in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Although this book chronicles Lancaster's redevelopment efforts, one can easily catch sight of similarities that Lancaster went through during this period with many other mid-size cities across the United States.
Schuyler looks primarily at housing, downtown development, and suburban sprawl in his book.
From the housing perspective, Schuyler shows areas in Lancaster in the post war 1940's that lacked many of the basic living conditions that are standard in housing today. Two such areas, Barney Google Row and Shantytown reflected two of the worse housing areas in the city, including among other conditions no indoor plumbing. Although living conditions were deplorable in many areas, especially in minority areas in the city, the city did not adopt a formal housing code until 1960. Also, the city was reluctant to develop public housing since as Schuyler points out, "community leaders felt it was a threat to the free enterprise system".
Schuyler spends much of the book describing the failed attempts to redevelop downtown Lancaster. At one time, downtown Lancaster was a thriving commercial district. Unfortunately, things started changing as a result of suburban sprawl and the impact of the automobile. Schuyler documents the many failed attempts by local leaders to bring life back in the center core of this once emerging city. What is interesting is that most, if not every, Mayor who was in office during this time campaigned on the necessity to revitalize downtown Lancaster. In addition, Lancaster hired some of the most respected urban consultants to help plan for a new downtown. Although these consultants brought advanced urban ideology to Lancaster, their ideas were either not implemented in their entirety, or they were modified to such an extent that the changes were not comprehensive in scope.
Schuyler vividly points out that the demolition of many historic buildings was a disaster for the downtown. Although the consultants that Lancaster hired were nationally renowned, they lacked a desire to consider historic preservation in their designs. Unfortunately, many of the 18th and 19th historic structures were demolished during this time. Schuyler's display of photographic images of several historic buildings that were replaced by new urban shells leaves the reader with a real sense of disappointment and a vivid sense of the value placed on historic preservation by the local leaders of that time.
Read the entire article