With the decision to rebuild the infamous I-81 for the new community grid in Syracuse, some of the city’s hubs for arts and culture are showing how the major roadway has affected, and continues to affect the 15th ward.
The elevated highway will be torn down and replaced with a street-level “grid.” That will free up land and eliminate the highway that destroyed a bustling neighborhood in the 1960s.
But what does this now mean for the people living in these areas of construction as history repeats itself?
Three major Syracuse institutions are using art to address this question, exploring the history of infrastructure and its social impact. Each mirrors a theme of giving a voice to the voiceless, and tackles how major roadways, or waterways, negatively impacted the people of Syracuse and the environment.
Everson Museum of Art
15-81, an exhibit housed in the Everson Museum of Art created by architect and urban designer Sekou Cooke, focuses on the background of placement and displacement of Black residents in Syracuse and addresses historical events within the city.
Cooke’s project, We Outchea: Hip-Hop Fabrications and Public Space showcases documents relating to the 15th Ward and highlights its destruction, the building of multiple public housing projects, and the construction of the major roadway.
The Museum of Modern Art first commissioned the exhibit in 2021 as part of Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America.
Steffi Chappell, the Assistant Curator for the Everson Museum said Cooke looked into the areas where Pioneer Homes were developed and how the structures of the site have evolved, but it’s the people of the 15th Ward who he felt was an important aspect to the installation .
“At first glance, it could appear that it’s the infrastructure that [Cooke] is really interested in, but the infrastructure means nothing without the people that live there,” Chappell said.
According to Congress for the New Urbanism, the construction of I-81 forcibly displaced nearly 1,300 residents. It devastated a historic Black community in the 15th Ward. Many homes, businesses, and buildings were destroyed, and with them, affordable housing options.
Chappell said there are two components of the exhibit that Cooke wanted to highlight.
“He incorporated his artwork and projects, which is a mix of architectural renderings and design, and then a structure of the sculpture that incorporates an actual concrete staircase from a house in Syracuse,” Chappell said. “The other half features, historical documents, photographs of the 15th word before urban renewal, during urban renewal, and then after effects of urban renewal as well as the construction of the highway and a lot of newspaper clippings that kind of explain and speak to everything that happened.”
The exhibit will be on display through Aug. 21.
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse Stage recently partnered with the Everson. The partnership included panel discussions at Syracuse Stage and the museum where community members were able to discuss concerns of the impact of the construction as both works of art confronted the removal of the I-81 overpass.
Created by Syracuse Stage resident playwright Kyle Bass, the play salt/city/blues centers on race, class, and familial tension and the imminent removal of I-81 and gentrification of the neighborhood, generates conflict among the characters, a similar sentiment to Sekou Cooke: 15-81.
The play is through the lens of Yolonda Mourning (Chantal Jean-Pierre), a Black woman working as an independent consultant on a project created to remove part of a highway dividing the city.
The play is a contemporary drama set in a downtown bar named Tipsy’s Pub in a fictionalized “Salt City,” which mirrors Syracuse.
According to Bass, the characters Prof D (Leo Finnie), Carrie (Joey Parsons), Fish (Rand Foerster), and Yolonda’s son, Malcolm (Jeremiah Packer), are all affected by decisions made by Yolonda when she purchases Tipsy’s Pub.
“The intersectionality of the characters in the bar — they are from different places, classes, and strata and then Yolonda comes in and she becomes a metaphor,” Bass said. “When she enters the bar, things start to fracture and she represents what the highway did 60 years ago.”
The last showing of salt/city/blues was last weekend. You can read Bass’s thoughts on the highway in an essay he wrote for syracuse.com here.
The Erie Canal
The Infrastructure of Empire, curated by Hannah Lewis, the curator of collections and exhibitions for the Erie Canal Museum, explains how the canal was built, how it has changed the physical and social layout of the region, and how it continues to influence New York State.
Lewis and others point out the similarities between the iconic canal and the highway.
“[The conversation of] infrastructure was at the tips of everyone’s tongues at the time,” Derrick Pratt, the Museum Educator, said. “It makes sense because the Erie Canal is really the first major infrastructure project in American history and New York state history and there are a lot of parallels between that and what’s going on with the I-81.”
The exhibit touches on the social, physical, and environmental impacts the canal had on the New York region over the years.
The canal brought people and new ideas into the region. Social reform movements like abolitionism and women’s suffrage, prohibition, and various religious movements thrived in the canal corridor. Different languages, customs, practices, and religions were infused into the nation.
The canal allowed for the first great westward movement of American settlers, gave access to land and resources, and made New York the leading commercial city in the United States.
But there were negative consequences, too. The Erie Canal displaced Indigenous peoples among the canal route.
“This pretty much stretches all the way across the traditional homelands of the Haudenosaunee,” Pratt said.
The canal also increased trade that, in turn, led to pollution.
“The salt industry and the Solvay process were both industries that used the canal for transportation and the Onondaga lake was the direct location that both those industries used to find salt near the lake,” Lewis said. “The lake became incredibly polluted from those two industries.”
In 1918, the section of the Erie Canal that passed through Syracuse was replaced when the New York State Legislature cast aside the waterway for a new canal, the State Barge Canal.
Renee Barry, the Erie Canal research Fellow said many saw the Erie Canal not only as a health risk, but as a separation of the city.
“People were saying, ‘Oh, we’re going to get rid of a thing that separated and segregated our city,'” Barry said. “It is so interesting because this is not only an environmental justice concern, but it unfortunately affects racialized groups and it is history repeating itself.”
According to Lewis, I-81 was placed almost directly where the Erie Canal ran. Now the museum is trying to make the conversation around the Erie Canal more inclusive by adding voices who were negatively impacted by the channel.
“What we need to do is democratize who is telling the story of the Erie Canal,” Barry said. “It just completely ignores issues of colonization and racism and ignores the fact that slavery was existing during the canal days and it has never been mentioned. So it’s much more than just representing stories. Historically marginalized people haven’t been part of [the conversation] and by creating spaces it will include people having different relationships to the canal.”
The Infrastructure of Empire exhibit will be displayed in the Erie Canal Museum until Oct. 31
“This is an incredibly topical subject in our city’s history,” Pratt said. “It’s an important story that needs to be told and I think we have one perspective, but there are definitely other perspectives that certainly need to be highlighted and it’s great other organizations are also thinking about it.”
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