By Laura Lance

On September 12, 2022, in the gathering ruins of the failed Project Pascalis — a public-private development scheme characterized by two years of closed-door meetings and a shuttering of citizen input — Aiken City Council added two public comment periods to their regular bi-monthly meetings for citizens to voice non-agenda concerns. This, after it was pointed out that City Council had been in violation of city code for years by not providing this comment period. Nine months later, City Council began laying the groundwork¹ to walk back this policy, cutting back on what is essentially the only avenue for citizens in a city of 32,000 people and a county of nearly 175,000 people to publicly speak to City Council on issues of concern. City Council’s decision to cut back on allowances for public comment occurred on the immediate heels of the City’s destruction, sans public input, of the trees in the Williamsburg parkway behind the historic Aiken County Farmers Market. This destruction marked the kickoff to yet another closed-door, public-private development scheme. The need for citizen input in the decisions that affect our City only grows. A review of some history is in order.

It might surprise some people, (it certainly surprised this resident of 65 years), to learn that, once upon a time, the iconic parkways lining the Richland Avenue corridor running from the old Aiken County Hospital to Beaufort Street didn’t pause at the center of town, but actually extended the entire length from west to east

This is to say that there was once a parkway in the center of Richland Avenue between Newberry and Laurens Streets. Can you imagine looking out the windows of the Johnson Drug Store or the Commercial Hotel in 1935, (the date given for the vintage Commercial Hotel postcard at the top of this page), and seeing a grassy parkway of pines, cedars, oaks, magnolias, camellias, azaleas and yuccas?

Aiken’s parkways and magnificent trees and shrubs are the jewels in the crown of the Andrew Dexter and Cyril Pascalis 1834 plat for the Town of Aiken with its characteristic gridwork of boulevards and parkways. So when did this Richland Avenue parkway disappear from the center of town? And why?

The 1928 Destructionists

In 1928, the entire length of parkways from the hospital to York Street were threatened with destruction. The battle to save the parkways was led by the Aiken Civic League — a citizens committee composed entirely of women, who fought and ultimately helped win the battle to save these parkways.

The threat of destruction had arrived with the 1928 paving of Highway No. 1 from Augusta to Aiken, which raised the question over where to place the highway down the Richland corridor: straight down the center, or off to the side?

Twenty-three residents on Richland Avenue answered that question with a petition demanding the parkways be destroyed so that the road could be run directly down the center of Richland Avenue. Joining these “destructionists” as they came to be called, were two of the five commissioners the City had appointed to the task of studying and making the decision. The view of these destructionists was that running the road down the center was necessary for safety and future progress.²

Pushing against this idea were the Civic League and a large number of other citizens who signed the League’s petition. Also opposed to the destruction of the parks was the Aiken Standard, which featured a statement on its front page that read, in part:

“The Richland Avenue paving proposition is, we repeat, one which vitally concerns every citizen and property owner of Aiken. If Richland Avenue parks could be destroyed a dangerous precedent would have been established. It would naturally, and legally, follow that hereafter the parks on Park Ave., Barnwell Ave., , or any other street in Aiken, could be done away with in like manner…. 

“The Standard, together with what we believe to be a large majority of the people of Aiken, is concerned to retain the city’s parks intact, and to protect them from invasion or destruction, whether in the name of progress — and concrete paving is not always progress — or in any other manner. Our characteristically delightful parks mean more to Aiken than a stretch of concrete paving which any town can have.” ³

In the midst of the battle was also the matter of a bond issue for the road, which was up for a vote in June 1928. The Civic League demanded ironclad assurance that the parks would be unmolested, and they guaranteed that, without this assurance, the bond issue would be defeated by a strong show of citizens who would side with the Civic League.

“The women of the Civic League hold the key to the situation,” wrote the Aiken Standard. “They should not relinquish it, nor agree to destruction of the parks under any compromise conditions.”⁴

If not for the urgency of the bond issue, this battle might have dragged on, but the Civic League’s victory came quickly, within a month. It is not difficult to imagine, then, the level of dismay felt by Civic League’s members when, less than a year later, Aiken City Council made a motion to destroy part of the Richland Avenue parkway. 

In retrospect, the situation could have been predicted. The birth of the National Highway System in 1926 had brought large federal dollars to fund the paving of a 300 year-old route to be named US Highway 1 that could carry automobile travelers from Fort Kent, Maine all the way to Miami Florida. It only followed that the highway would draw some traffic.

The 1929 Destructionists

It was the prosperity of the 1920s and Henry Ford’s assembly line that made automobiles affordable enough to create a boom in auto sales that, almost overnight, heralded the arrival of traffic jams to downtown Aiken. The problem with these horseless carriages — in addition to their noxious noise and fumes —was that, unlike horses, they couldn’t easily maneuver around low-hanging limbs while simultaneously dodging oncoming traffic and pedestrians. Too, there was no place to park automobiles without jamming up the roadway.

This confusion of cars converged in that particular block of Richland because, in addition its location in the heart of the business district, the recent paving of US Highway No. 1 had made Richland Avenue the primary route for vacationers and land speculators traveling through Aiken on their way to Florida, where another sort of boom was taking place. By 1929, the bottleneck in that section of Richland had grown untenable.

Stirred into all of this was a period of unprecedented prosperity. In 1929, Aiken was into its second year of “the biggest building boom in the history of the city,”^{5 ,6}with millions of dollars being spent in land sales and the construction of new winter residences.

It was this prosperity that led to the construction and renovation of two hotels in adjacent blocks on Richland — the new Henderson Hotel and the existing Aiken Hotel. The renovations on the Aiken Hotel introduced scaffolding, trucks, and workman’s cars to the existing kerfuffle of traffic on the Richland block. This was further aggravated by an absence of traffic rules in Aiken, a concept yet to be born.

All told, it was likely the hotel construction in the spring of 1929 that brought the situation to a tipping point. This may have been what led Alderman H.E. Holley to make a motion⁷ in a May 1929 City Council meeting to have the Street Committee study the widening of that section of Richland Avenue. His motion was seconded and approved, beginning a series of events that pitted citizens and Council in a battle that would play out for a dozen years.

The Magnolias

Richland Avenue’s two-lane streetway had ample dimensions, thanks to the generous 150’ width provided in the Dexter-Pascalis design, and could easily accommodate the large turning radius needed by wagons, buggies and such. The center of that particular Richland Avenue block was occupied with a lovely and quite beloved park.

The citizens’ protest over widening the road, which would necessitate cutting into the parkway, was instantaneous, contentious, and divisive. On one side of the debate were the Aiken Civic League, the Park Commission, Richland Avenue property owner Walter Plunkett, and a group of local notables, including Winter Colony residents Louise Hitchcock and Hope Goddard Iselin,who were progressive in matters of landscaping, beauty, preservation, culture and education. The other side of the debate was headed by Aiken City Council, three-quarters of the Richland Avenue property owners, and a number of other progress-centric citizens.⁸

At particular issue were two very large, old magnolias with low, spreading branches that stood at either end of the parkway — one at the intersection with Laurens Street and another at the intersection with Newberry Street — both of which would have to be severely cut to accommodate this plan. ⁹

The Aiken Civic League was in attendance at the June 10, 1929 City Council meeting and read a letter of protest recommending a different approach than the one raised in Alderman H.E. Holley’s May motion. The Civic League recommended, specifically, to first try enacting and enforcing some rules for traffic and parking. ^10. What seems commonsense today was still a novel idea at the time.

City Council overrode the citizen protest and voted to widen the south-side lane of the Richland Avenue block (fronting Hotel Aiken and Johnson Drug Store) by cutting 5 to 6 feet into the park.¹¹

This was summertime, however, so the Winter Colony voices, which would have added weight to the protest, were not present. However, one such resident, Hope Goddard Iselin, who was a member of Parks Commission, (a legal body appointed by the mayor), did send a telegram to Mayor Henderson on June 12. “Had always considered any action that curtailed or interfered with parks a bad precedent and detrimental to Aiken’s best interests,” she wrote. “Hope you will give this question your earnest consideration.”¹²

In August, the Civic League, the Parks Commission and the Street Committee met and drew up an alternate approach. Their plan was to extend Bone Yard Alley (Bee Lane) across both lanes of Richland. This would be accomplished by cutting a 75’ foot strip through the treeless center of the park, creating an area that could accommodate parking and help relieve traffic congestion. The plan was unanimously agreed upon by all in the group.¹³

The group brought their alternate plan to the September 9, 1929 City Council meeting — a meeting heavily attended by 25 members of the Civic League, members of the Park Commission, Mr. Walter C. Plunkett, and other like-minded citizens. Several telegrams of protest from Winter Colony residents were read, and Mrs. Julian B. Salley spoke on behalf of the people of Aiken “to make a plea for the trees.”¹⁴ On the other side of the debate were three-quarters of the property owners in that Richland block, who brought a petition urging a widening of the street 10 feet into the park, sparing the trees if possible.

The Civic League’s plan was defeated in a 5 to 2 vote. Alderman Holley then made a motion that Richland Avenue be widened “not more than ten feet” into the park and to destroy “not more than one tree.” The motion passed with a 5 to 2 vote. ¹⁵ For the third time in three months, City Council had overridden a strong citizen protest.

Two days later, Walter C. Plunkett, a property owner in the Richland block, took out an injunction prohibiting the City from changing or altering the parkway. The Civic League and Parks Commission signed on. ¹⁶

Later that same month, on September 20, 1929, City Council held a special meeting wherein they decided to appeal the injunction. ¹⁷

A Change in Plans

Little could anyone know, but a stock market crash loomed in the near future. It took a while for the circumstances to filter through the layers of prosperity. The first to fall were those for whom scraping bottom was already a way of life — sharecroppers, farm hands and day workers, the latter of whom depended largely on the upper class for jobs building and maintaining homes and estates, and accommodating the lifestyles of these residents and their guests.

In 1930, newspaper stories of jubilee balls, drag hunts, and garden luncheons continued apace aside stories of the failure of the local Bank of Western Carolina and the stories of local joblessness and desperation. One such headline told the story of 375 jobless Black people, some of them “in suffering condition,” who had been called by local officials to assemble at the Aiken County Courthouse.¹⁸

These 375 people believed they’d been assembled to receive assistance but, as it turned out, they’d only been called so that their numbers could be counted. Afterward, officials expressed hope that churches, lodges and societies might help them, and that more new houses might be built to give them work, and that the federal government might look into the matter and devise some kind of plan. In the meantime, they were advised to go back to the farm where they could raise food to eat. They were further advised to not to get discouraged, but to trust in God, do right, be good citizens, and not think of robbing anyone or stealing anything.

The textile millworkers in Horse Creek Valley were the next to fall, as employers tightened their belts. The workers existing struggles were compounded by union strikes in 1932, which put upwards of a thousand people out of work, some of them claiming conditions of starvation for their families. ¹⁹ Editorials in the local paper, which tended to downplay the existence of local economic hardship in the earliest years of the Depression, disputed accounts of hunger. The reality of difficult of the Depression years for working-class people in Aiken County went largely unreported.

Cases are Heard

In December 1929, the temporary injunction of Walter C. Plunkett et al. was made permanent in a case heard before Judge W.H. Grimball.²⁰ In October 1930, the City’s case was heard before the SC Supreme Court, which overturned the injunction. ²¹

The year 1930 was an election year, so the makeup of the City Council shifted slightly going into 1931. Too, the issue of traffic rules and enforcement had only grown more urgent. On January 14, 1931, with new Council members in attendance, a contentious debate took place before City Council over the “delinquency” of the police department in enforcing parking rules.

According to the fire department chief, parked automobiles had blocked the roadway during a recent fire and had to be moved just to allow the fire truck room to pass through. One alderman suggested an ordinance to prevent this in the future, only to be told by another alderman that there were already laws on the books to prevent such events, “But the police won’t enforce the law.”²²

The mayor discussed the idea of installing traffic lights, to which another alderman said, “What is the use, no attention is now paid to the stop signs in the city, and no one will enforce the law.”²³ 

During this same meeting, the women of the Civic League, putting the proverbial steel in the magnolia,  presented the newly elected City Council with a resolution recently passed by the Civic League regarding the parks. Mrs. M.C. Lyon, the President of the Civic League, read the resolution to City Council before presenting them with a copy.

“Resolved, That in view of the recent decision of the Supreme Court reversing that of Judge William H. Grimball and setting aside the temporary injunction against the City Council of Aiken in the proposal to widen Richland Avenue between Laurens and Newberry Streets at the expense of the park in that street, the Civic League recognizes the right of the City Council of Aiken which has now been firmly established to alter or change the park system of Aiken whenever in its opinion it considers the same necessary. 

Resolved, Further, that since the Civic League was moved to seek restraining action in this matter through no spirit of contention but only in the desire to protect the parks of the city and to retain their symmetry and beauty; and 

Resolved, Further, that since the City Council which moved to alter the park in question has passed out of existence and has been succeeded by a new administration, the request is made of the City Council by the Civic League that, its right in the matter having been established, no action should be taken which would tend to destroy the beauty of any park in the City of Aiken or which would have the effect of engendering public feeling. 

The Civic League, as does City Council, believes that Aiken’s parks are among the City’s chief assets.

THEREFORE, this Resolution is presented to the City Council.²⁴

Despite disapproval of “many citizens,” ²⁵ Council voted to widen Richland Avenue, cutting eight to ten feet into the park. No trees were removed.

The February 1931 Street report described the ensuing work in two sentences, an almost anti-climatic conclusion to the events of the prior 18 months: “Took out curbing on Richland Ave. from Laurens St. to Newberry St. Built up parking space with gravel.’

For a few years, the bottleneck on Richland Avenue eased. Much of this was due to the reduced traffic on Highway No. 1, whose overall flow was reportedly reduced at one point by nearly 80% due to circumstances of national policy and economy. This relative lull allowed Aiken the necessary time to solve some of the newfound local dilemmas presented by the automobile— speed limits, minimum driving ages, rights-of-way, parking rules, and the hiring of a motorcycle cop.

The New Deal

By the mid-1930s, the impact of FDR’s New Deal programs began to be felt locally. Numerous facilities and projects were built — the Aiken Municipal Building, a new high school at the corner of Barnwell and Laurens, the new Aiken County Hospital, a waterworks plant out on Hwy 1, the federal court house on Park Avenue, and Aiken State Park to name just a few. The population of Winter Colony residents and guests swelled; the numbers of tourists and speculators to Florida resumed, and, with that, the Richland Avenue bottleneck returned.

In 1938, a group of citizens brought a petition a before City Council requesting the destruction of two parks: the park in the disputed Richland block, and the Laurens Street park between Richland and Barnwell Avenues. The petition read, in part, “Your attention is directed to the fact that said blocks are at times congested, making it a hazard to the traveling public.” Council — which had been deemed via the SC Supreme Court decision eight years earlier to hold the responsibility for ensuring the safety of the traffic on the streets — voted to have a survey made before giving the matter further consideration. ²⁶

In 1941, twelve years after that first attempt by City Council to cut into the parkway, a motion was again made to destroy the Richland Avenue parkway. Two other parkways were also to be destroyed — the Richland Avenue parkway between Pendleton and Laurens Streets, and the Laurens Street parkway between Barnwell and Richland Avenues. ²⁷

The fourth central block in the downtown — the Laurens block between Park and Richland (see photo below) — appears to have never featured a parkway. This brings up an interesting topic that was raised in the Aiken Standard’s account of the December 1929 injunction hearing with Judge Grimball.

The facts, as laid out in the hearing, stated that, on the original plat of the City of Aiken, the entirety of Richland Avenue had been dedicated to the public as a street with no areas set off as a park. It was only during subsequent years that City Council divided the 150-foot width of Richland Avenue into three parts, as follows: two 37-foot-wide highways for travel on either the north and south sides of the street; between the two highways was, “a park running parallel with the two highways and containing trees, grass and shrubbery.” ²⁸

The Wake

When the decision was made in 1941 to pave over the Richland Avenue park, ²⁹the Civic League was no longer a voice. According to a February 8, 1933 article submitted by the Civic League to the Aiken Standard. “The year 1932 was a difficult year for everyone, and the Civic League found it so. All our funds were tied up in the Bank of Western Carolina, so that we began the year with an empty treasury.” ³⁰

The Civic League had subsequently been obliged to relinquish their meeting quarters in the Opera House. Sometime during 1936-1937, and without fanfare, the Civic League disbanded. It is not possible to know today what direction decisions might have taken, what options might have been considered in 1941, given the benefit of input from the Civic League, the Park Commission, the Street Committee, and other concerned citizens. It may be that there were no other viable options.

Certainly, the disfigurement created by the destruction of the parkway in the Richland block is apparent, albeit subtle. Travelers new to the area, heading east on Richland Avenue, might wonder momentarily, as they enter that Richland block, how to best navigate the odd confluence of lanes. Locals learn to more or less go with the flow, however it leads at any given moment.

Still, the decision to destroy that Richland parkway was preceded by twelve years of debate and deliberation and — even at the eleventh hour, in 1941 — was preceded by “considerable discussion,” in a public City Council meeting plus an investigation by a committee appointed by the mayor. Pending the decision, the City painted large, white, four-foot stop signs directly onto the street in the business district in an attempt manage congestion.³¹ Democratic processes were at play.

Contrast this with the 2021-2023 decisions made by the City — without taking in so much as a word of citizen input — to demolish historic buildings in downtown Aiken, to give away Newberry Street to a developer and, just last week, to destroy the trees in the Williamsburg Street parkway behind the historic Farmers Market. 

Mistakes Were Made

The City Council’s defense for the destruction of these trees is that it was some sort of accident; the City had given the wrong plans to the contractor. Citizens don’t yet know what the intended plan was for this parkway and these trees — perhaps they’ll tell us soon — but, according to City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh, it was intended to be a “joyous occasion.”³²

Once upon a time, City Council existed to serve Aiken’s citizens. There were always varying degrees of struggle between citizens and government to strike workable agreements and balance. That’s how it’s supposed to work.The advent of public-private development partnerships has radically shifted the balance of power away from the citizens to the extent that today’s decisions better serve the interests of developers, industry, investors, and speculators. 

Citizens’ requests for public hearings to address important issues that affect our town — such as the City’s demolition, sans input, of historic houses — go unanswered. ³³Decisions are made behind closed doors between the City and its business partners. Citizens are treated in public meetings like an inconvenience to be endured; made to feel like intruders, the enemy. Last month, the citizens’ “Do It Right” movement was arguably mocked in a meeting between the City, the Aiken Corporation, and the architects tasked with doing a feasibility study for the City’s latest public-private venture, the 45,000 square-foot “Labscalis.”³⁴ Police are at the ready during City meetings, and have been summoned three times over the past year in actions that, lacking warning or explanation, seemed capricious. Citizens are the last to know of the City’s decisions to take a wrecking ball to the center of downtown, demolish old houses in historic neighborhoods, and destroy a parkway of trees.

Had a public-private development partnership been at the helm in 1929 and 1941 Aiken — with City Council meeting behind closed doors and suppressing and circumventing public participation in local government — the important decisions might have been drawn, not in concert with the taxpaying citizens who call Aiken home, but according to what would have best served the interests of those who profit from destroying parks, trees, and historic places and marketing their deeds as something called “progress.”

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REFERENCE

1. Moniak, Don “Order of City Council Agenda,” Aiken Chronicles, June 12, 2023.
2. “Mr. Cannon in Error,” Aiken Standard, June 15, 1928.
3. “Mr. Cannon….”
4. “The Danger is Real,” Aiken Standard, June 8, 1928.
5. Building Permits for First Half of Year Aggregate $838,863.00,” Aiken Standard, July 4, 1928.
6. “Building Permits for June $284.530,” Aiken Standard, July 5, 1929.
7. Aiken City Council minutes, May 13, 1929.
8. “Protests Against Widening Avenue,” Aiken Standard, August 16, 1929.
9. “ City Council, A Hotel, and a City Park” Aiken Standard, September 27, 1929.
10. “City Council, A Hotel…”
11. Minutes Regular City Council Meeting, June 10, 1929.
12. “Protests Against…”
13. “City Council, A Hotel…”
14. Minutes Regular City Council meeting, September 9, 1929.
15. Minutes September 9
16. “City Council is Enjoined from Cutting into Park.” The Aiken Standard, September 13, 1929.
17. “City to Appeal Park Injunction,” Aiken Standard, September 25, 1929.
18. “Many Colored People Now Out of Work,” The Aiken Standard, December 31, 1930.
19. “Strike is Nearing Crisis,” The Aiken Standard, May 9, 1932.
20. “Grimball Denies Council Right to Widen Richland Avenue,” The Aiken Standard, December 25, 1929.
21. Case overturned
22. “Police Officers Urged to Action,” Aiken Journal and Review, January 14, 1931.
23. “Police Officers Urged to Action.”
24. “Police Officers Urged to Action.”
25. “City Will Cut Disputed Park,” The Aiken Standard and South Carolina Gazette, January 16, 1931.
26. “Citizens Want Street Widened,” Aiken Standard and Review, May 11, 1938.
27. “Council Asked to Widen and Pave Business Streets,”  Aiken Standard and Review. June 11, 1941.
28. “Grimball Denies Council…”
29. Council Approves Paving and Removal of Parks,” Aiken Standard and Review, August 13, 1941.
30. “Years Activity of Civic League,” The Aiken Standard, February 8, 1933.
31. “Police Trying to Reduce Traffic Hazards in City,” Aiken Standard and Review. July 4, 1941.
32. Christian, Matthew, “City officials say farmers market tree removal shouldn’t have happened.” June 16, 2023.
33. “Mr Mayor, Answer our Letter,” Aiken Chronicles, April 3, 2023,
34. Smith, Lisa, “What is the Status of the Savannah River National Lab Building Downtown,” Aiken Chronicles, June 9, 2023.