A City Runs Through It: Reasserting Syracuse Beneath the Expressway

By Carl Yost
Goldring Arts Journalism Student

The future of Syracuse is now on display at the Everson Museum of Art. In a small rectangular room, on the ground floor of the Everson, four competing design proposals for the Connective Corridor initiative are on view.

On Thursday, Sept. 21, the museum hosted a public symposium to solicit opinions on each proposal before a jury selects one team to design the corridor. That team will be charged with linking Syracuse’s arts and entertainment venues—places like the Everson, the Landmark Theatre and The Redhouse—into an urban "personality" that is distinctly Syracusan.

To accomplish this, the winning team must establish a community space that stretches from downtown to Syracuse University and is attractive enough to make those who use it oblivious to the interstate passing overhead.

"There are many kinds of obstacles" to the corridor, says Casey Jones, an architecture expert who has been advising Syracuse University throughout the project. "[Interstate] 81 is just one type."

But because it is such a prominent obstacle, I-81 reveals just what the corridor is up against. The expressway slices Syracuse in half, physically implying that the economic and cultural opportunities at the university and hospitals have little to do with
those downtown. It represents a mindset that has no stake in this city.

Consider the travelers cruising through town on the elevated highway. For them, downtown Syracuse makes nothing more than a fleeting impression, a skyline that temporarily interrupts views of the rolling green countryside. Suspended on the concrete catwalk, travelers need not interact with the city.

Some will stop to refuel or grab some food, while others may make Syracuse a side trip, perhaps for one of the many summer music festivals. These tourists make vital contributions to the city’s economy, but when they leave, their commitment to Syracuse leaves with them.
Economics provided a primary reason for building the expressway in the first place, said Dennis Connors of the Onondaga Historical Association. In the 1950s, Syracuse was clogged with automobile traffic. Downtown business leaders feared congestion was preventing people from patronizing their businesses and began believing that express
highways would be a good solution.

"There was not a sense that putting this barrier between the university and downtown would be a problem," said Connors.

If drivers could access downtown quickly and conveniently, it was thought they would be more likely to shop there. That was a common sentiment at the time. Robert Moses, the urban planner who arguably shaped modern American cities more than anyone else, wrote about traffic congestion in his 1956 book "Working for the People."

"The remedies are modern expressways right through and not merely around and by-passing cities," he wrote.

The more prescient Syracuse officials had doubts about the very type of direct expressway Moses advocated, Jerome Cohn noted in his 1978 Syracuse University doctoral dissertation. But because the federal government was paying 90 percent
of the cost, local authorities went largely ignored in the planning process, and I-81 cut right through Syracuse.

The expressway did relieve congestion, but it did so a bit too well. Once people could easily access downtown, they decided to live farther away from their workplaces on larger plots of land. In further disregard for urban districts, federal mortgage policies encouraged this relocation.

And once people lived so far outside the city, they no longer wanted to drive all the way downtown. Businesses soon followed their clients, and the rest is urban history. As individual needs slowly triumphed over civic needs, the character of city thoroughfares changed dramatically. A healthy city requires active, pedestrian-oriented streetscapes, such as those found in Armory Square or Westcott Street, where citizens can freely mix and intermingle.

On the high-speed interstate, however, drivers keep their distance. Otherwise, accidents happen. That is not to say car ownership is bad, but that the automobile, in keeping people separated, emphasizes the individual over the community. And the interstate, as a place elevated exclusively for automobiles, encourages civic disengagement en masse.

Yet that very elevation is what makes the Connective Corridor possible. Underneath the expressway lies the chance to re-emphasize community interests. Connors points to the success of cities like Covington, Ky., where the Northern Kentucky Riverwalk has created a strong sense of community space in contrast to the no-place of the interstate.

Bronze statues of historical figures line the walkway on the Ohio River, and the park is full of people strolling, watching the river, or taking their pictures next to a life-size statue of naturalist John James Audubon.

In Syracuse, that community space will likely include wider sidewalks, abundant lighting or even sound-deafening devices to reduce highway noise, says Chris Rauber, division engineer for the city of Syracuse.

Eric Persons, director of Engagement Initiatives in the Syracuse University chancellor’s office, emphasizes that the winning design proposal is not the final word on what the Connective Corridor will look like.

"It’s not selecting a [specific] design," he says. "We’re really trying to gauge the vision that these teams are bringing."

Whichever project wins, its vision must be one that helps us cast a blind eye to physical barriers, like Interstate 81, that keep this city divided.