Existing comment:
Bearing Witness
These documents introduce a collection created by real estate appraiser Plater Tayloe Gedney (1919-2000) while surveying Southwest properties destined for demolition. His appraisals would guide compensation offers from the Redevelopment Land Agency. After urban renewal legislation passed in 1945, Southwesters fought its eminent domain powers all the way to the Supreme Court. They lost in 1954, freeing the RLA to take their properties for "higher, better uses."
The hundreds of photographs and appraisals, donated to the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. in 2014, offer important records of some of the 4,800 properties demolished and 6,000 families dislocated during the urban renewal of Southwest. |