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Fondren Renaissance Foundation
THE FONDREN COMMUNITY: Surviving Urban Sprawl ..................by Robert Parker Adams
The Early Days (1800's)
Rural communities are formed for many reasons, but most are located
in an area where the inhabitants can carve out a living. These places
might be selected for geography, for convenient transportation , for
abundant resources, or for available employment in the area. Most
communities share some part of all these. The founding of Fondren
included these reasons, but an insane asylum also played a large part,
as we shall see.
The city of Jackson was created by the
Mississippi legislature in 1821 out of formerly Indian lands at the
geographic center of the state. It is one of two American cities
originally designed specifically as a capitol city, the other being
Washington, DC. Despite the Jeffersonian gridiron layout of the
original town plan, no thought was given for the design of future
development only two or three miles into the countryside. Fondren was
to evolve in this countryside and become its own city, only to be
swallowed by the inevitable sprawl of the state’s governmental center.
In spite of this, Fondren’s integrity as a community continues today.
The
site of the new capitol city of Jackson was selected because it was
within twenty miles of the geographic center of the state, was on high
ground, had adequate water, and river access. Roadways soon developed
to the south, connecting Jackson to Natchez and thence New Orleans.
Roads also extended north to Memphis and eventually Chicago. This
northerly road, named Canton Road after the next large town, became the
site of Fondren. A prominent fork with Tougaloo Plantation Road three
miles north of Jackson afforded a convenient location. It was the
highest ground in the area (to combat yellow fever), and was close to
the Pearl River. Most importantly, the area was directly adjacent to
the Mississippi Lunatic Asylum, established in about 1850, and later
called the State Hospital for the Insane.
The state hospital was
a rich source of jobs, although most were menial. A black community
grew up around the fork to serve this need. Following the Civil War,
when the plantations had been destroyed and property divided, a large
parcel of land at the fork was bought by Isham Cade, a black man. Cade
subdivided the land into parcels and had the area surveyed. It was
known for years as ‘Sylum Heights, although the original plat shows it
as the Isham Cade Survey (subdivision).
Most of the land north
of Jackson had been farmed. Some five thousand acres of it had belonged
to the Garland family, whose holdings were destroyed during the war.
The Cade property came from these holdings. David Fondren purchased
some of Cade’s land in 1893 and built a wood frame general store there.
The location, at the fork between Canton Road and Tougaloo Road, also
fronted on a rail spur which served the Insane Asylum Property. Fondren
was thus well situated to serve the small but established community,
the hospital, and the north-south traveler.
The growing
community was in need of a post office, and in 1894 one was established
in the Fondren Grocery. Some residents felt ‘Sylum Heights was not a
desirable name for a community, and they petitioned the US Post Office
to establish the station as Fondren. A Fondren Post Office still exists
today, less than a block away from the original location.
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The Early Days (1900's)
Although the little community probably never exceeded several
hundred people, it grew to have all it needed for self-sufficiency. It
had become established by the time healthcare eschewed large,
incarcerating wards in insane asylums. In 1918 a new State Mental
Hospital was constructed fifteen miles to the south of Jackson. Most of
the old asylum structures were demolished in short order by a crew of
state prisoners. The Fondren community, now well established and
racially diverse, was able to continue without the original organizing
focus of the hospital.
The community continued to grow, adding
other businesses as well as dwellings. The Fondren family built several
homes on Tougaloo Road (renamed State Street Extension). Churches
became an important part of the community. Eventually drug stores,
restaurants, filling stations, a neighborhood theater and other
amenities joined the community. Most were in individual buildings, but
sometimes they were joined together, as a commercial area began to
evolve. Some businesses adapted existing dwellings, later to be
replaced with permanent stores. In 1925, development pressures in
Jackson pushed housing to the south edge of the old hospital grounds,
and the city of Jackson annexed Fondren, immediately north of it. It
was the first inclusion of a developed community within the Jackson
city limits. Shortly thereafter an area just northeast of the former
asylum grounds became an exclusive neighborhood of fine homes.
A
school was built in “downtown Fondren”in 1928, and following World War
II the first suburban shopping center in Mississippi was built on the
original Cades Alley. Jackson’s first “high-rise” suburban office
building was built in Fondren shortly thereafter. It was only five
stories tall, but nothing around it exceeded two. The post war building
boom added significantly to the housing stock. The neighborhood
continued to be racially diverse until the 1950s, when rising property
values forced the last black resident to move from Cade’s Alley.
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Recent Past - Present
By the 1980s the neighborhood was being abandoned to the new
“estate lots” of adjacent bedroom communities. The flight resulted in a
reduction of owner-occupied housing in west Fondren. The concerns on
the part of long term Fondren residents led to the organization of a
very effective neighborhood organization now known as Fondren
Renaissance Foundation. The boundaries included a socially,
economically and racially diverse area of about 2500 residents and 200
shops. A private voluntary tax base was created, neighborhood security
organized, thirty rental houses bought, rehabilitated and resold to new
owners the first year, and the state’s first Urban Main Street Program
was instituted.
Fondren has thus found a new pride in its
heritage and considers itself a historic neighborhood. There is renewed
respect for old buildings, sites and artifacts. The Pix movie theater
is being restored and the area has become a mecca for restaurants and
antique stores. The salvation of the neighborhood is its sense of
community, the completeness of its commercial and residential areas,
and the awareness of the residents that there is real substance there.
People are actually moving back from the bedroom communities to live
and shop in historic Fondren.
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This userpage was printed from Fondren Renaissance Foundation
http://www.fondren.org
The URL for this userpage is:
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