SAVANNAH: OLD WEST BROAD STREET

Posted September 6, 2024

West Broad Street, once the commercial core of Savannah’s Black and immigrant community, before-and-after construction of the “I-16 Flyover,” an interstate highway spur that cut through the surrounding neighborhood and left it divided to this day. Senator Raphael Warnock, raised in the shadow of the flyover, described the highway’s impact on his neighborhood in a letter advocating for its removal: 

“The Old West Broad Street, which is the new MLK Jr. Boulevard, was once the center of a thriving community and home to Black families and businesses, as well as many Asian and Jewish immigrants… However, in the 1960s, the federal government demolished and paved over landmark buildings, homes, and businesses for a new highway spur,” writes Warnock. “It is a dream of mine to see that community restored” (1).

The Biden/Harris Administration’s Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Initiative (RCN) has provided funding to start making that dream into a reality. Savannah has been awarded $1.8 million to study removing the highway spur, including the creation of an equitable redevelopment plan. According to Director of Planning Bridget Lidy, the plan “ensures any future use of the site gives back to the community,” including, crucially, the construction of affordable and workforce housing in place of the highway to help support businesses in the area and prevent gentrification (2). 

Over the next two weeks I am partnering with Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Local Infrastructure Hub, a national program which helps cities navigate and access federal funding opportunities, to highlight recent successes from the RCN towards healing the wounds caused by the infrastructure choices of the past, particularly in often-overlooked small- and mid-sized cities. Because the RCN is one of the first programs that enables cities to apply directly for federal planning funds, many do not have experience navigating the complex and costly federal grant process–especially perennially underfunded smaller cities like Savannah (3)(4). The Local Infrastructure Hub offers pro-bono support to these cities, providing expert assistance to help communities across the country access federal money for reconnection. 

One of the oldest cities in the South, Savannah has long had a large Black population due to its prominence as a slave port. The neighborhood I-16 replaced was established by freed slaves shortly after the end of the Civil War. Called “Frogtown” due to the many frogs from the nearby Springfield Canal, the community was centered around West Broad Street (first image) on what was then the edge of the city, as Jim Crow segregation prevented the Black population from living more centrally. One block over from West Broad, Montgomery St. was the dividing line between the Black residential area and a growing community of Jewish and Asian immigrants, also prevented from living more centrally. West Broad served as the main commercial drag for all of these communities, turning the area into a multicultural hub (5).

With the arrival of the railroads in the late 1800s, the rail companies built passenger and freight terminals on West Broad, and the street became the primary connection between the trains and the working riverfront. This role as the critical link between the rail ports and the river ports fueled commercial development on the corridor. The construction of Union Station (seen in the first image) in 1901 in particular boosted the area’s economy due to the considerable passenger traffic. For decades, Union Station was Savannah’s primary point of entry, with dozens of trains a day from across Georgia and the country at large. While the station was segregated inside, with separate Black and white waiting rooms and facilities, passengers stepping out of the station found themselves in the heart of Frogtown, surrounded by Black-owned businesses, including the Dunbar Theater, Royall Funeral Home, the Guaranty Insurance Company, the Savannah Pharmacy (which can all be seen in the first image), and many more. 

The area thrived as a transportation hub and entertainment hotspot into the early 1960s. However, like so many cities around the country, post-war highway construction and suburbanization had encouraged white flight from Savannah to the suburbs, partially accounting for Savannah’s 21% population loss between 1960-70 (6).

The population loss drained the city’s tax base, and the decline in passenger rail and freight traffic resulting from highway construction hit Frogtown particularly hard. Despite the remaining population and the strong community, a 1961 city report declared the entirety of the area to be “blighted and beyond rehabilitation.” Union Station itself was demolished in 1963 and replaced with an on-ramp to the new I-16 highway, complemented by an elevated off-ramp (the “flyover”) that took out dozens more buildings on both West Broad and Montgomery (7).

Many of the businesses on Broad were forced to close and the area lost its economic vitality. “They ran us out of business on West Broad Street,” said Frenchye Bynes, owner of the Bynes-Royall Funeral Home (through the family’s perseverance, the Bynes-Royall was able to eventually relocate elsewhere in Savannah and remains the oldest continuously Black-owned business in the city)(8). In recent years, led by leaders like @raphaelwarnock, the community has organized to reclaim the area and remove the highway. While the federal RCN grant is a small step, it is a crucial one to begin repairing the damage.

The Local Infrastructure Hub is a national program guiding municipalities in how to navigate historic federal funding opportunities, develop competitive grant applications, and bring essential investment home to residents. Led by Bloomberg Philanthropies which galvanizes support from the Ballmer Group, Emerson Collective, Ford Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, Waverley Street Foundation, National League of Cities, The U.S. Conference of Mayors, Results for America, and Delivery Associates, the Local Infrastructure Hub is a first-of-its-kind initiative helping thousands of mostly small towns and mid-size cities draw down once-in-a-generation federal funding to improve their communities for generations to come.

For cities of 150,000 or fewer, the Local Infrastructure Hub is now offering new pro-bono grant-writing bootcamps. Officials can sign up at LocalInfrastructure.org/application-bootcamp/. There are also trainings, strategy sessions, and events available for cities of all sizes at LocalInfrastructure.org.

Endnotes

1. Steuteville, Robert. “Historic Chance to Remove Highway Barrier, Reconnect Community.” Congress for the New Urbanism, 2022. https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2022/11/22/historic-opportunity-remove-barrier-reconnect-community (accessed 8/15/24). (@cnu_newurbanism).

2. Lasseter, Evan. “Savannah Awarded Key Grant to Plan I-16 Flyover Removal, Receives Support from Senator Warnock.” Savannah Morning News, 2024. https://eu.savannahnow.com/story/business/transportation/2024/03/15/savannah-awarded-key-grant-to-plan-i-16-flyover-removal/72943843007/ (accessed 8/15/2024). (@savannahnow).

3. “91% of Cities Say Insufficient Funding Delaying Critical Infrastructure Investments.” National League of Cities, 2021. https://www.nlc.org/post/2021/05/10/91-of-cities-say-insufficient-funding-delaying-critical-infrastructure-investments/ (accessed 8/15/2024). 

4. Sisson, Patrick. “For US Cities in Need, Grant Writers Wanted.” Citylab, 2024. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-06-14/grant-writers-in-demand-as-smaller-cities-scramble-for-infrastructure-funds (accessed 8/15/2024). (@citylab).

5. Michney, Todd. “Savannah: Context.” Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America, 2023. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map/GA/Savannah/context#loc=14/32.0677/-81.0935 (accessed 8/15/2024). 

6. Nicholson, Zoe. “West Broad Remembered: How a thriving, multicultural community came undone by ‘renewal.” Savannah Morning News, 2022. https://eu.savannahnow.com/story/news/2022/10/27/before-interstate-16-savannahs-west-broad-thriving-commercial-corridor-georgia/10476325002/ (accessed 8/15/2024). 

7. Sottile & Sottile. “Reclaiming Old West Broad.” I-16 Exit Ramp Removal Project. https://reclaimingoldwestbroad.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/chapter-2-history-and-evolution.pdf (accessed 8/15/2024).

8. Sottile & Sottile.

Historic images reproduced with permission from the Georgia Historical Society.