The Story of I-496

The creation of I-496 in 1965 was part of larger movement involving the creation of the interstate system that correlated with the movement of many people from the cities to the suburbs in the middle part of the 20th century.

Like all technological advances the highway system brought significant change to the country as a whole, the American city and suburb culture, as well as to the individual communities that were completely eradicated by the creation of highways through what was previously neighborhoods.

For our public history course, we will be researching I-496 and its correlation with the larger interstate highway system. We started our research by reading Matt Miller's article, "Looking Back: I-496 Construction: A Complicated Legacy," which mainly focuses on the residents of one of the neighborhoods that was eliminated during the construction process. Under the power of eminent domain the many residents were forced to sell their homes and relocate.

Originally, there were a good number of neighborhoods along I-496, including a neighborhood that had once housed the upper crust of Lansing (but had by the 1960s fallen into disrepair) and the largest Black neighborhood in Lansing, with its own downtown area that was completely eliminated by the freeway. These drastic changes can be seen at the Interactive Material created to accompany Matt Miller's article in the Lansing State Journal. There are also pictures of the construction project underway. Below is an guide to what one stretch of I-496 looks like today:

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So as we embark on this project, we ask a number of questions:

•  What were the neighborhoods that were eliminated by I-496 like before they disappeared?
• What types of shops were found in the Black downtown?
• How many historic houses were destroyed in the old affluent areas?

• Why was this specific location chosen?
• Who were the people doing the planning and what were the factors that they considered?
• Did racism play a role in the decision?
• How did people feel about this decision?
• Did the project face much resistance?
• Were people able to successfully relocate?

• How is the I-496 project representative of what was going with the interstate highway system on a national level?
• What does the construction of I-496 say about the public's view of preservation?
• What can be said about racial housing practices and segregation at this time?

Searching for Local History

Map of Historic Sites in the East Lansing Area of Michigan

From http://www.mcgi.state.mi.us/hso/map.asp

Having just started Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You, by David E. Kyvig and Myron A. Marty, it came as no surprise that our professor wanted our class to do some exploring of local history. He directed us to the Michigan Historical Center Website, which will search for historical sites by city. In the area around East Lansing, there were a good number of historical homes that were still being lived in, but I felt uncomfortable with the idea of going to check out a house where someone was living. Continuing down the list I found a toll house that was built about halfway through the nineteenth century.

It is quite possible that the Alonzo Proctor Tollhouse is the only historic tollhouse left in Michigan. It was originally on the Lansing to Howell plank road that connected Lansing all the way to Detroit, after the state capital was moved to Lansing. The tollhouse, according to the Michigan Historical Center Website, was originally located at 564 North Hagadorn Road in Okemos, MI, but had been moved to Wonch Park, which was also in Okemos. When I went to go see it, it was not there, but instead had been moved from its original location to Meridian Historical Village. That the Michigan Historical Center did not know or did not have the correct location of one of Michigan's historic buildings, I find rather disconcerting.

Meridian Historical Village is a collection of older buildings from the area that have all been moved to this park so that visitors can see them all together. On one hand, this seems like a wonderful on-taking, creating a park where people can go to learn about history, on the other hand, it robs each of these historical buildings of their context. Personally, I find myself torn over whether or not this trad off is worth it.I have always loved going to such historic sites like Greenfield Village, Colonial Michilimackinac, and Colonial Williamsburg, but I also think that there is something extremely special about historic buildings remaining where they were build like Meadowbrook Hall or the Turner-Dodge House. 

One question to ask is who is going to see these buildings. Many of the historical parks have programs for schools to take students on field-trips in order to help the children to gain a vague idea of what life was like "way back when." They also have family weekends where the whole family can get involved in learning about history. Many of the places still on their original spots do not appeal to such a wide audience. Some have been converted into offices or private homes and no attempt is being made for their historical merit to be presented to any audience except that of the owners. Other historical landmarks may be recognized as historical in passing, but no one ever learns their stories or their significance. On the MSU campus, for example, there are any number of historical buildings, but few if any of the students could tell you anything more about them than that they are in fact old.

In Kyvig and Marty's book, they discuss the significance of local history being in connecting the history of a particular person, family, object, building, or place to the wider history of the time. How is a specific family representative of the trends of the times? What does an old Victorian mansion tell us about the way people lived, the class system, and the architecture style in a particular region? These are the types of questions we are trying to be able to answer in saving historic buildings and monuments. The question is how best can we do this?

History and Heritage

In his book The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History, David Lowenthal describes the differences between history (defined as critical inquiry into the past) and heritage (defined as the use of the past to support a certain conclusion) and challenges that are faced by both. Lowenthal explains that the popularity of heritage has grown exponentially in recent years: "Memorials and monuments multiply, cities and scenes are restored, historic exploits are reenacted, flea-market kitsch is elevated into antiques. Retro-fashion rages and camcorders memorialize yesterday. Historic sites multiply from thousands to millions; 95 percent of existing museums postdate the Second World War" (Lowenthal 3).

Lowenthal goes on to describe how different individuals, families, communities, regions, and countries as well as ethnic, political, and religious groups use history as a way to find identity or belonging, to justify past or current actions, or to support their position on a current issue. With heritage, people are looking to find certain things and usually succeed. Often what is most significant is not was is said but, instead, what is left out.

In the past, most heritage issues had to deal with the elites of society, often emphasizing their glorious lineages, but today, heritage has become important to the populous. People now want to go to museums about how the common people lived, the small cottage where a country farmer lived, the factory where hundreds of workers eked out a living, etc.

With so many people fighting over heritage, it beg the question of who possesses this heritage. Does a man have the right to hold on to his grandfather's diary of World War II, when there are others who wish to know more about it? Should the nobility still in possession of their English country homes be allowed to keep them private when the English people believe such houses to be a part of their national heritage? Do U.S. museums have the right to hold on to Native American artifacts that many tribes want back? Since heritage deals with people possessing parts of the past, questions like these become huge issues for museums and heritage sites.

Another interesting thing that Lownethal points out is his book is how peoples' admiration of the past causes that past to be damaged or altered. Lowenthal explains how the hoards of people who take pictures of the great works of art in museums cause the paintings to diminish over time, how the steps of castles are worn down by the numerous tourists who come to visit.

Worn Staircase at the Chateau d'Amboise

This is also true of cultures. Admirers of cultures and cultural histories flock to experience them and in their flocking, the original culture and history become scarce. This summer I spent eight weeks in Tours, a beautiful French city of about 200,000 on the Loire River. Besides having a international institute for teaching French, which could not have had more that several hundred students, there were no tourists, no tourist shops, no English spoken.

The only hints of globalization were the few chain restaurants (probably no more than 10 or 20 in the entire city) and Galeries Lafayette, a French department store chain. It was wonderful! I had the chance to speak French with real French people, to see how they really lived, to shop in all of the small boutiques that lined the streets, to walk through Place Plumereau, a medieval square with restaurants on the ground floor and apartments above, to pass by some the ruins of an ancient monument that had been destroyed during World War II.  

Tour de Charlemagne

When I was able to spend a weekend in Paris, it was something of a disappointment. Paris was mainly full of non-French tourists. Even those who were French had learned to speak English to tourists. There was even a Burger King on the Champs Elysees. The culture of what I was able to see of the city was all over-run by tourists. One could observe French culture immortalized in paintings and buildings, but the living, people aspect of the French culture was hard to be found.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

My weekend in London was even worse. I planed my trip looking forward to hearing all of those wonderful English accents that Americans love so much, but I hardly heard any. The staff at the hotel and the tourist shops were all recent immigrants, hardly speaking English, little lone the that of the Queen.

Sacre Coeur de Monmartre