The Paramount in 1949 Photo by Ed Roseberry
The Charlottesville Downtown Mall is one of the most popular places in town for students and locals to eat, shop and play. But it hasn’t always been that way. A controversial “urban renewal” project in the 1960s razed nearby Vinegar Hill, a center of African-American life in Charlottesville. Many buildings along Main Street were in disrepair, and downtown businesses were dying off as suburbs sprouted and commerce grew along U.S. 29 North.
In an effort to revitalize the area, the city closed a stretch of Main Street to vehicles in the ’70s and engaged the architectural firm of Lawrence Halprin & Associates to design a brick-paved pedestrian mall. Completed in 1976, the seven-block mall is now considered one of the country’s most successful pedestrian plazas and is home to shops, restaurants, theaters, an outdoor music venue and an ice rink.
The U.Va. Architecture School has joined with other local groups to create two exhibits that focus on Halprin’s design process for the mall and uncover further plans he had hoped to implement in the downtown area.
Those unrealized plans envisioned “a network of intensely programmed streets and landscape connections, so that the mall would reach out in all directions,” says U.Va. architecture professor Elizabeth Meyer.
Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall in March of 1976 Photo by Ed Roseberry
Comments
As a college student, I was on the planning group in, I think, 1972, that spent a weekend working with people from the Halprin firm to begin the process of planning the downtown mall. The group included a couple of other students, Janet Palmer was one, if I recall correctly, representatives of the University’s administration and people from Charlottesville, including a lady who owned a business on Main Street. I learned a great deal through the process and enjoy returning to the downtown mall when in town. I regret that the rest of the project was not carried out.
Bob Stiles - Barb and I saw J. Geils in concert tonight! Where were you? Last time I saw you was in Cumberland Maryland where you were helping to extend the runway on the old airport.
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