I have not seen mention of Little Falls, NY, yet in this discussion of
Urban Renewal programs of the 1960s and 1970s.

Little Falls had seen better days and most of the mills were empty when the
trend to level the world started, and the south half of the main street
fell to the wrecking ball.  Three shoe boxes were put in their place
housing a grocery, Mickie D's and a motel.  Facing these blights is the old
business district which still has scores of ornate, character-filled
facades, which really drives home what was lost.  The remaining storefronts
have (or I hope that is now past-tense "had") the most god-awful ugly
aluminum columns and an awning running the entire length of the street to
modernize them and keep the sidewalks dry.  With vision like that who needs
old dirty buildings.

To say that the residents had hindsight or after-the-fact lament of their
losses is not at all true in this case (and I am sure many other cases) as
residents brought lawsuits against the city to stop demolition of the old
bank building which is now the Historical society and they managed to delay
destruction of a number of the great stone mills on the river long enough
for the right people with vision to come along and save them.

Another loss that was the result of Urban Renewal was a lot of historical
documentation.  I know of several instances where cities and towns scrapped
anything old, including municipal, cemetery and church records because it
was of the past and they were starting a new chapter (There are also lots
of hero stories of people grabbing these records from the trash bins and
preserving them for future generations and a time of changed
attitudes).  In Little Falls they tossed thousands of city engineers maps
and files as they had every intention of just whiping the slate clean and
starting over.  When I did my research on the Western Inland Lock
Navigation Canal in Little Falls for Phil Lord (early 1990s) the
then-current adminsistration was trying to rebuild their maps as they had
no idea where sewers and water lines ran.  The few maps the city did still
have had been found in the attic of one of the city buildings slated for
demolition.  I saw lists of maps and records that no longer existed that
would have provided great insight into the canal, river, industries,
properties, etc.  It was as if I was looking at the list of stuff burned in
the 1911 Capitol fire, except this destruction was on purpose.

In Cazenovia the plan was to knock down some of the lesser wooden buildings
on a side street and put up modern precast congrete bunkers that were set
at an angle and clashed horribly with every bit of their
surroundings.  Fortunately nothing ever came from it.  Unfortunately we did
lose one of the old proud houses across the street at about the same time
to a post office which was made to look oldy-timey but only looks like
cra_.  In that case the community had a prolonged hissy fit and huge
campaign to save it.  One of the main reasons it was knocked down was that
the lady who was then the Town Historian (NOT Mrs. Hendrix, who fought hard
to save every scrap of our history) made the statement that we had enough
old buildings already, so what does the loss of this one matter?  It is now
a singular blight in the middle of a huge National Register District.

The Horrors.  The Humanity.  The Insanity.

        Dan W.