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If given the choice of driving or walking, Times critic and co-host of “Still Processing” Wesley Morris will always choose to walk. He grew up in Philadelphia but resisted getting his driver’s license until he was 32.
Last November, a $1 trillion infrastructure bill Allotment to law signed by President Biden $1 billion to reconnect neighborhoods divided by highways.
In the middle of the 20th century, highways were built. to modernize regional transport and to meet the demands of post-war progress. But these mega-road projects have often displaced more than a million people, mostly Black, across the country; increased car addiction; and brought decades of environmental damage.
Wesley was impressed by the Biden administration’s initiative, in part because it was the federal government’s recognition that mid-century infrastructure policies were causing communities to suffer. It got him thinking about a highway that could be addressed with this bill. It was built in 1991 in his hometown: Vine Street Highway.
As a child, Wesley would occasionally cross the Vine Street Highway – and he recalled that there was “big work to be done” while it was being built. But he never thought about how its construction affected the Chinatown neighborhood from which he carved. What happened to all the people living there? How have their lives – and their communities – changed? And why did it take Wesley so long to ask himself these questions? Wesley returned to his hometown to find out.
[You can listen to this episode of “Still Processing” above, or on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.]
Two very different Chinatowns after the highway
Philadelphia’s Chinatown, like Chinatown everywhere, is full of the hustle and bustle of life. Wander around and you’ll see the neighborhood’s trusted tea shops, delivery trucks, restaurants, and grocery stores. At least, you’ll see it in the part of town south of the Vine Street Highway.
North of the highway is the Holy Redeemer Chinese Catholic Church and School, a social services center for the community, and some below-market residences. Most Chinatown residents use these services, but they have to cross the highway to reach them. This part of the neighborhood feels more industrial, less lively. This is testament to the changes the Vine Street Highway has enforced on society.
If you ask about the history of the Vine Street Highway, one name will come up: Cecilia Moy Yep, “known as”godmother of chinatownCecilia, 92, has been struggling with major developments in Chinatown for more than 60 years – before the Vine Street Expressway was planned.
Cecilia has lived in Chinatown since elementary school. And as long as he can remember, Holy Savior Catholic Church and School “People from all over the city wanted to send their kids to Chinatown to learn Chinese at a Chinese school and introduce their kids to other kids of the same ethnicity,” Cecilia said.
“It’s just where we go to school, where we get married, where we bury our dead,” Cecilia continued. “Everything that is a part of our life happened in the Holy Savior.”
The original plans for the Vine Street Highway cut directly through Chinatown and required the church to be demolished. But by the late 1960s, Cecilia was instrumental in her struggle to protect it. “We had a town meeting, and I somehow – how should I say – broke tradition by speaking up,” Cecilia said. “Women in Chinatown don’t raise their voices. They do now, but not before.”
“Cecilia flint. She’s someone with a great spark of personality. But there’s something about the flintlock that hints at strength and determination.”
— Wesley Morris
Cecilia’s efforts to protect the Divine Savior ended with a compromise: the Highway would divide Chinatown into two, Divine Redeemer to the north and the rest of the community to the south. Today, many students have to cross the highway every day to get to school.
Wesley recently joined a group of kids who were crossing the highway to get to daycare. “I feel like a car is going to run over me,” one of the boys said. Another boy replied: “It’s safe because it’s next to a church.” “God is always watching over us,” he continued.
A tough transition for seniors
Every Friday, more than a hundred older adults from the neighborhood have to cross the highway to get to the food bank. Crane Community Center, next to the Church of the Holy Savior. Wesley joined a group living at On Lok House, an apartment for transitioning seniors, last Friday.
Eddie Wong, the housing manager of On Lok House, described the walk as a true Frogger game. And he was right—if Frogger was played with a shopping cart by an 80-year-old actor. He focused on the real barrier the highway created among the Chinatown elders and their need to get to the food bank.
Once you get to the other side of the highway, it “feels like a completely different neighborhood,” Wesley observed. There is a queue of people waiting for food between the highway and the parking lot. “I could see with my own eyes what it would mean to have your neighborhood bisected by infrastructure,” Wesley said. But waiting in line has become an important, though regular, community experience. Friends catch each other and hold dots in line with shopping carts. When the food is distributed, they exchange their favorite items, such as the kids changing their lunch.
“You heard about all the bodies they dug up, right?”
The Vine Street Highway has not only disrupted life in Chinatown, it has also disrupted the peace of the dead – especially those buried in the cemetery of the First African Baptist Church, founded in 1809.
Plans to build the highway required graves to be excavated from the church’s cemetery so that a highway extension could be built right on it.
In all, 89 bodies were dug up and then reburied to make way for the highway. Heaven Cemetery In Collingdale, Pa. Eden Cemetery was established in part to house the remains of Blacks whose graves were moved due to public works projects.
“Disturbing graves to really make a highway – I think people will say that if that’s not done we’re going to stand in the way of progress.”
— Pastor Griffith
Wesley met Terrence Griffith, who is originally from Grenada and has been pastor of the church since 2001. “I don’t think our ancestors expected this to happen,” said Reverend Griffith, standing in one place with Wesley. The overpass that once faced the cemetery – has now been replaced by a six-lane traffic jam.
An opportunity to look up
Wesley met many people while exploring new parts of his hometown. And he witnessed firsthand how a single piece of infrastructure can shape your experience of a city. “You can go a lifetime without someone who isn’t like you – and who likes you racially – because that’s how cities were built. Segregated.”
He realized that the Vine Street Highway was part of that separation. “Well, it fell well below street level to the ground. All these drivers can just pass by and don’t even think about the fact that the neighborhood they’re driving through didn’t really want them there in the first place.”
“But once you take a second to just look to your left or right, or, God forbid, look up from your congested, depressed highway,” Wesley continued, “there’s an opportunity to think about what you’re really driving through, past or beyond.”
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