Bridgeforth & Downtown Overview [+map]
3 Bridgeforth & Downtown Overview
Bridgeforth is a tenemant-filled neighbourhood north of downtown and across the Clare River. Originally built for workers in the steelworks in the 1920s the neighbourhood has always been home to a large ethnic population ranging from Chinese immigrants in the 40s to a large African-American population in the 1950s and 60s. Today the area is a mixture of Russian, Vietnamese and African-Americans making it the most diverse neighbourhood in the city. During the 80s there was a "Bridgeforth Plan" put forward by Mayor Chesney Roberts to clear away the tenemants and replace them with modern apartment buildings, evidence of this can be seen but many of the tenemants are still in place as the plan was never totally carried out. Due to it's ethnic populaton it hasn't been subject to as much gentrifcation as the Delaware and Church neighbourhoods.
3.1 Mailer / 9th Ave
Here is probably where the largest amount of redevelopment took place. You can see two apartment buildings built on the site of the old tenemants in 1981 as well as the Stanley Gurertwich Memorial Library named after the radical mayor of the 1970s who bought major prosperity to the city by allowing huge redevelopment of the downtown area. The library was built in 1992 after foundations along this road were disrupted by the extension of the G Line across the river.
3.2 North Embankment
The east end of Bridgeforth houses some of the poorest families in the whole of Oakwood. It is also home to the largest crime rate and the highest teenage pregnancy rate both state and federal funds have gone to revelop the area without a great deal of success. As part of the Bridgeforth Plan many of the community gardens which had become overgrown were replaced with parking lots to encourage greater car ownership (and therefore greater employment it was believed). When Mayor Roberts was ousted from office some plots were returned to their original state and public transport was focused on with the extension of the G Line and the number 7 bus route was redirected from Mailer Street to Kennedy Street.
3.3 North Bridgeforth
The northern end of Bridgeforth is home to a very large African-American population many of which came to the city as a result of the lack of civil rights in the South in the 1950s. As such the neighbourhood is peppered with amazing grocery stores including the famous Hannan Stores portrayed in the 1999 film "An Ode to the Oak". This area of the city is on the limits of Clare and Montgomery Counties and as such is served by both OMTA buses and CT buses from across the border providing links to downtown Oakwood and downtown Catherine.
3.4 Lurie Park / East Bridgeforth
Bordering the prosperous Lurie Park neighbourhood East Bridgeforth has recieved more attention than it's poorer neighbourhoods and it's population is a vibrant mix of Russian, Ukranian and middle-class office workers who enjoy an easy commute across AC Mayer Bridge to downtown. It is also home to many CIA employees who work just across the road is the huge CIA Federal Building built in the 1970s. As well as the neatly painted rows of houses and polite neighbours the area has just recieved a branch of Raley's supermarket on the site of an abandoned office building. Some have argued the small branch poses a major threat to local delis and grocery stores especially those on the pleasant Bellow Street and Lower Lurie districts.
Now for something a bit different and these are some establishing shots of the area I would now consider to be most completed in my city and that is the Downtown and Upper Midtown areas. Downtown is what is north of the major Market Street throughfare and Midtown is what is south of it.
3.5 North Downtown / South Bridgeforth
The Clare River cuts right through Oakwood and this can be seen clearly as it divides the prosperous, gleaming downtown with the ethnically diverse and poorer neighbourhoods over in Bridgeforth. The Booker Bridge was built in 1886 and was the first bridge to cross the river that remains today it carries across the 6, 10 and CT11 bus routes and underneath it runs the 1990s extension of the G Line.
3.6 Central Market
The Bank of America Tower dominates the Oakwood skyline and the areas surrounding it. Central Market is home to Macy's Department store, the CityCenter shopping mall containing branches of major names like Brookstone, American Eagle, Hot Topic and H&M. As well as this there is a flagship store of Old Navy and Forever 21. As can be seen most of the buildings like the Logan and Provincial Towers were built in the mid-70s under the redevelopment plan of Mayor Gurertwich in order to encourage a large financial sector to set-up shop in the city.
3.7 Upper Market
The massive Pylon Square development featuring the two, huge office blocks of 302 and 303 Market Street was completed in 2003 and is currently home to American Airlines, Barclays International, Bank of the West and a few, smaller tennants. The Banking Center was another of Mayor Guretwich's developments and that is currently home to Amazon.com and AIG. The building is a very pleasant place to work with it's huge windows, communal staff areas, coffee shops and large courtyards. Also shown here is the Filmore Museum of Art built in 1959 and home to one of the most important collections of American Art from 1900 onwards including artists such as David Hockney and California's own Ansel Adams.
3.8 Map
So here is the Downtown installment of my Google Map for Oakwood. I've actually completed the road, rail and subway network map for the whole city in the style of Google Maps but as of yet it's not actually finished but since I've completed the Downtown segment I hunkered down and got this up-to-date.
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I hope you enjoyed my latest segment. I've just been accepted into a University in London to study Politics in September so I hope I will keep updating this until I leave and then when I return in the holidays I'll take it out of retirement for you folks and work on it some more. Still that's all in the future and there's a good few updates coming until then. Comments are, of course, very welcome.
- Adam
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