Tracking the Community Displaced for the Senate Office Building: Public Use, Citizenship, and the Rising Scale of Segregation

Carolyn Swope, Columbia University

In this presentation, I explore the outcomes for residents who were displaced in the early 1900s for the construction of the first Senate Office Building. While the stories of communities destroyed for government buildings are rarely told, they raise pressing questions about justice and democracy. I ask: Although the project imagined a singular and identifiable public interest or common good, who was excluded from that vision, and how were they harmed by its imposition? Based on archival evidence including Census records and fire insurance maps, I identify who lived in the square prior to demolition, and where they moved afterwards. I consider how the displacement contributed to intensifying patterns of segregation and spatial inequality on an increasingly large scale. In particular, I highlight the uneven effects of displacement. I find that Black residents of the interior alley community likely received no compensation, and moved to other marginalized areas which have since seen another wave of destruction – while white homeowners living on the exterior streets were typically able to parlay their compensation payments into the purchase of new homes in more affluent areas.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 107. Inequality and Segregation in US Cities