The Isaac Levy family of Levy’s Busy Corner,young Gene Cherrico with his grandmother Filomina,and Lewis Jefferson, Southwest’s millionaire.
further isolating Southwest.The canal was paved over in the s,but by then the Baltimore and Po tomac Railroad tracks along Virginia and Maryland avenues impo s eda new barri er, aswould the Southeast-Southwest Freeway of the s. Even before the Civil War ( ‒ ), migrants from rural Virginia and West Virginia, European immigrants — especially Italians and German and then Eastern Eu ropean Jews — and both enslaved and free African Americans predominat- ed in Southwest. The waterfront community was a natural for the Underground Railroad,and the infamous Pearl escape attempt of began here. During and after the war,thousands of newly f reed African Americans settled in Southwest, attracted to its affordable housing and unskilled employment. By Southwest was fully built but deteriorating. Talk of rehabilitati on surfaced in the s . But by the s architects and planners had new ideas. Rather than renova ting indivi dual stru ctures, influential planner Harland Bartholomew a nd ar c h i tec ts Lou i s Ju s t em e nt a nd C h l o et h i e l Woodard Smith called for razing entire blocks.
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