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The Demographic Side: The Impact Zone

The City Beautiful Movement did procure significant improvements, like clean, paved roads, purer waterways, plenty of greenspace and parks, a marvellous new Capitol, and a generally more pleasant aesthetic. However, these reforms did not benefit everyone. In fact, the very improvements that boosted Harrisburg's profile as the capital of Pennsylvania held serious consequences for some of its residents.

Michael Barton, a local historian and author, wrote about two aspects of the 8th Ward's destruction. On the one hand, he states that "if you believe in clean, uncrowded streets, legal products and merchants, and fairly gentle nights--all civilized virtues, certainly--then you will likely view the evacuation and pacification of the Eighth Ward as 'reform.'" On the other hand, he adds that "yet, it is clear that the Ward served some certain human needs, for how could it have prospered otherwise? It was the scene for the expression of particular types of manhood and womanhood, and the only 'community' many deviates and minorities could find" (1998).

This passage, especially the last sentence, demonstrates why I wanted to explore this topic. The 8th Ward in 1910 was home to 6,330 people. In 1920, it went down to 5,175. All of the other twelve wards increased in population between these two decades, but the 8th Ward did not. The Extension Commission officials reimbursed the displaced individuals for their lost property, but that does not change the circumstance of mass eviction.

One of the nicknames for the Old Eighth Ward is the "Bloody Eighth." In his columns for the Harrisburg Patriot and the Harrisburg Evening news, journalist Paul Beers describes this old ward, "The 'Bloody Eighth' was the ward behind the Capitol that ran north from Walnut Street. Well into the 1920s it was a mixed neighborhood, with much of the early Jewish community settling there. It is doubtful if much blood did flow in its alleys...The Eighth Ward, in short, probably had a livelier reputation than the facts warrant" (2012).

So, who was mainly involved in this? Below, using the databases Access and Excel, I used the parameters of race, birthplace, and relation to see how the demographics of the 8th ward changed over the course of the Capitol Park Extension.

1910Ward8exAccessimage.png

This image shows a snapshot from Access. The 1910 Census records here is narrowed down to the 8th ward.

1910Ward8RaceExcel.png

This Excel document is an export from Access. It includes all of ward 8's 1910 record information, and using COUNTIF formulas I found out how many individuals of different ethnic backgrounds lived in this region. 

1920Ward8RaceAccessimage.png

This image shows another snapshot from Access. The 1920 Census records here is again narrowed down to the 8th ward.

1920Ward8RaceExcel.png

This Excel document is an export from Access. It includes all of ward 8's 1920 record information, and using COUNTIF formulas once more I found out how many individuals of different ethnic backgrounds lived in this region.

In his column about the 8th Ward, Beers eloquently describes that "the City Beautiful Movement, for all its civic achievements, ignored this racial group. Blacks continued to live in segregation, be educated in segregation, and be buried in segregation. Black emergence wouldn't come until the 1960s" (2012) Moreso than this, relating back to Michael Barton's statement, for some individuals the 8th Ward was the only place they could live in Harrisburg. The resulting diversity of this ill-fated ward makes its destruction even more unfortunate.

From their book African Americans of Harrisburg, John Weldon Scott and Eric Ledell Smith communicate that African-Americans mainly lived in the 8th Ward and that the Capitol expansion demolished their former living space (2005). My demographic findings supports their statement. In 1910, 1,342 blacks were living in the 8th Ward. This was around 36% of the entire population of African-Americans living in Harrisburg at the time. In contrast, almost five thousand whites lived the ward, but that only comprised 8% of the total white population the city. The statistic for individuals listed as "mulatto" was even more staggering. There were 351 mulattos in this area in 1910, which was almost half of their entire population in Harrisburg for that year.

The following Census record demonstrates the consequences of the Capitol project for the city's racial minorities. In 1920, 726 African-American lived in the Eighth Ward. The black population in this ward decreased by half, and now only 15% of Harrisburg's black community lived in this area. The same trend is true for the mulatto population. Now only 147 individuals of this ethnic group remained in this ward, composing 25% of Harrisburg's mulatto population. Conversely, the white population still had 4,301 members, which was 6% of Harrisburg's total white community. 

Fitting under the category of "deviates and minorities," immigrants were another population that found solace in the Old Eighth Ward. In 1910, before the Capitol extension, there were over seven hundred immigrants in the 8th Ward, about 11% of the ward's population. The subsequent records show that the immigrant inhabitants also felt the impact of the Capitol Park Extension Commission. By 1920, the number of foreign-born individuals sank to 275, a decrease of over 50% their previous statistic. 

Specifically, the number of Russian-born individuals in the 8th Ward decreases between 1910 and 1920. The First World War and the First Red Scare may have contributed to this as well, but the Russian population in this area decreased from 382 (over 50% of the ward's immigrant population) to 65 (down to 24% of foreign-born individuals in the area).

Connecting to the previous topic, since many immigrants were boarders, the number of boarders/lodgers in the 8th Ward plummeted by 1920. 

The 1910 Census record lists 913 boarders living in the Old 8th Ward, making up 14% of the ward's population. Moving forward a decade, only 251 boarders remain in the New 8th Ward. Now, boarders made up just 5% of the population in Ward 8.

After looking at these demographic results, it is clear to see that the construction of the Capitol Park during the 1910s had a harmful effect on many of the citizens living in the Old Eighth Ward. Unfortunately, many of these individuals were racial minorities, immigrants, and boarders who faced enough challenges as it was without being evicted from their homes. So, while the City Beautiful helped many, it forgot those who would have benefitted the most. 

A website led by Michael Barton, who wrote An Illustrated History of Greater Harrisburg: Life by the Moving Road, holds great additional information about who lived in the Old 8th Ward. From walking tours with annotated pictures (http://www.old8thward.com/capitolhotel.htm), resident directories by street (http://www.old8thward.com/residentdir.htm), and much more, the site is a fantastic resource for additional information about this topic. 

The Demographic Side: The Impact Zone