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Jefferson, Railroad Towns, and The Singular Plan of Aiken: Stanford Anderson
Jefferson, Railroad Towns, and The Singular Plan of Aiken: Stanford Anderson
Stanford Anderson
The town of Aiken, South Carolina, Aiken Web site wonders only about its Charleston to Hamburg, South Caro-
has charmed residents and visitors for broad streets, venturing that they may lina, on the left bank of the Savannah
more than a century. One reason is have been born of concern with sani- River, opposite Augusta, Georgia.4
its singular plan: a regular rectangular tation, or for convenience in turning The motivation of the railroad’s
grid of broad boulevards running in horse-drawn vehicles.3 trustees was to capture the trade of
both directions, creating a park-like The story is far richer and more the Carolina hinterland for their city.
environment throughout—even in the satisfying than that. But to understand Produce from this region had been
center of intersections.1 This special, it requires returning to the founding of moved more easily until then along
adaptable feature of Aiken has served the South Carolina Canal and Railroad the Savannah River, to the competing
it well since the town was founded, in Company, and even to the town-plan- city of Savannah, Georgia.
1834. Remarkably, it is also the result ning thought of Thomas Jefferson. Plans for the railroad progressed
of Aiken’s having been an early “rail- in the months that followed. And
road town”—a term that has come The South Carolina Railroad and in September 1829 Horatio Allen
to imply the simplest of plans, undif- the Founding of Summerville arrived in Charleston to be its chief
ferentiated grids set down with little In December 1827 a group of engineer. Earlier that year he had
more purpose than the crudest forms Charleston citizens organized and supervised the development of a
of land speculation.2 chartered the South Carolina Canal
How did Aiken come into being? and Rail Road Company. The second
Even the present city government can railroad to be built in the United Above: Recent map of Aiken showing its grid of
offer no adequate explanation for its States, and the first one with a long historic boulevards. MIT Urban Morphology Group,
distinctive qualities. And the current line, it was to extend 136 miles, from 1980.
Places 20.3 65
short-line railroad for the Delaware community of Summerville as a place to
and Hudson Canal Company, over- develop a sizable tract of their own: an
seen the assembly of locomotives agreeable town called New Summer-
he had procured in England, and ville, with a rail station at its center.
even become the first person in the In 1831, New Summerville was
western hemisphere to drive a loco- established, set out as shown in the C.
motive.5 Next, in March 1830, E. L. E. Detmold plan of March 1832 (but
Miller, a merchant and SCC&RRCo better revealed in the Mellard plan
trustee, signed a contract for the of 1850).6 This version of Summer-
company’s first locomotive. And ville was planned as a checkerboard,
in October of that year the “Best a square grid with broad streets, one
Friend” arrived from the West Point hundred feet wide. Every other square
Foundry in New York, the first loco- of land was designated as parkland—so
motive built in America. that only 33 percent of the land would
As plans for the railroad moved ahead, so did plans for real estate be available for development. Each of
speculation. Some Charleston citizens the “black squares” for development
of means had already chosen a site in was in turn divided in four lots of one
Middle: Route of the South Carolina Railroad from the piney woods 28 miles to the west acre each (210 feet square).
Charleston to Hamburg (on the Savannah River, for a summer retreat, a place to escape This was railroad land speculation,
opposite Augusta, Georgia). Ink on linen, ca. 1835. the heat and “miasma” of the city. The indeed—but with extraordinary quali-
Southern Railway archive. railroad trustees recognized the nascent ties and extremely low density.
Jefferson and the Checkerboard Plan the miasmata which produce yellow the middle of every street. It would
In 1805, concerned about yellow fever. I have accordingly proposed that have been easy to have made no lots of
fever in Washington and other Ameri- the enlargements of the city of New less size than half an acre, and by law
can cities, Thomas Jefferson had Orleans, which must immediately to have prevented their subdivision.8
written: take place, shall be on this plan. But
it is only in case of enlargements to be Praising the later foundation of
Such a constitution of atmosphere made, or of cities to be built, that this Columbia, South Carolina, Ramsay
being requisite to originate this disease means of prevention can be employed.7 noted that there were no lots of less
as is generated only in low, close, and than half an acre, that the two main
ill-cleansed parts of a town, I have Similar thoughts are recorded in crossing streets were 150 feet wide, and
supposed it practicable to prevent its Charleston during this period. In his no streets were less than 60 feet wide.
generation by building our cities on a history of South Carolina, of 1809, Nevertheless, “it is to be regretted that
more open plan. Take, for instance, the David Ramsay yearned that the origi- the lots were not by the original terms
chequer board for a plan. Let the black nal settlers of Charleston had planned of sale made indivisible, and their
squares only be building squares, and differently: owners restrained from building more
the white ones be left open, in turf and than one dwelling house on each.”9
trees. Every square of houses will be It would then have been nearly as easy
surrounded by four open squares, and to have made the streets 100 feet wide
every house will front an open square. as any inferior number. In that case Above and opposite: Street intersection views in
The atmosphere of such a town would they would have admitted three rows Aiken. A “square” is created at each intersection as part
be like of the country, insusceptible of of trees, one at each side, and one in of its boulevard plan. Photos by author.
Places 20.3 67
Summerville
The railroad trustees sought to
make such thought operative in their
plans for a low-density village in
the forest. These are revealed in the
plot plan of Summerville, and, more
explicitly, in the indenture, with a
remarkable set of rules, that would
need to be signed by each person pur-
chasing a lot there.
State of South-Carolina
District of Charleston
with particular attention to the pro- reasonably accessible from Charleston Charleston to Aiken, the descent from
tection of the forest environment. Yet as a summer retreat, just as the site Aiken into the valley of the Savannah
the plan was vulnerable, and its goals of Summerville had originally been River was steep precisely at this point.
were compromised. chosen because it was accessible by Because the railroad locomotives could
horse-drawn vehicle. not make this ascent, a stationary
The Founding of Aiken For Aiken, the earliest map is from engine had been installed there to pull
From Charleston, after passing 1834, a survey plan by Pascalis and the trains up to Aiken.11 The railroad
through Summerville, the railroad Dexter showing a grid of broad streets located the stationary engine and asso-
continued to climb the Carolina pied- and rectangular blocks, with lots ciated tracks as best fit the terrain, and
mont until it passed through another facing to east or west. A small array of some early development had already
piney, purportedly healthy, location. seemingly ad hoc streets and blocks at clustered around this operation.
There, the railroad made plans for the southwest corner of this plan were To this point, the re-creation
another new town, Aiken, named the result of technical circumstances of this story has been based on his-
after its president. Thanks entirely involved with the operation of the torical documents. But we have no
to the railroad, Aiken would also be railroad. While it climbed gently from documents to explain the reasoning
Places 20.3 69
sive—in this case universal—distribu-
tion of those streets. Streets in both
directions in the new town of Aiken
would be 150 feet wide, with one 200
feet wide. This street space would
incorporate the existing pine trees—as
in Summerville—just as they stood.
Indeed, the early streets of Aiken were
sandy lanes through the broad right-
of-way, dodging trees. This effect can
still be seen today.
Later in the century, in 1896, at
the same time that the South Carolina
Railroad sold off its remaining land in
Summerville, and thus sealed the fate
of its ambitions there, the railroad also
sold off its inventory of lots in Aiken.
The words are important here: note
“remaining land” in Summerville,
“remaining lots” in Aiken. The airy,
wooded quality of the town of Aiken
survived, thanks to an urban morphol-
ogy that resisted privatization of the
intended open space.
Boulevards of Aiken
Tracing the thought of David
Ramsay, there was clearly an anticipa-
tion among the movers in this society
that the character of the desired broad
streets would eventually be formal-
ized. A formal treatment of space
within Aiken’s streets may well have
been imagined by its founders. But
we have no evidence to that effect;
indeed, there is no indication of an
intention to create formal boule-
vards in Aiken. Instead, for its first
behind the layout of a differentiated en—i.e., the ideal of a community in a fifty years, these spaces must have
grid of broad streets in the Pascalis healthy environment where extensive looked much like the view in figure 9.
and Dexter plan. It is my hypothesis, open space and tree cover would be Nonetheless, I argue that the ambi-
however, that the original ambitions preserved. It was now implicitly rec- tions set out for Summerville, revised
for Summerville also applied to Aik- ognized, however, that such a scheme and improved at Aiken, provided the
could only be assured if the intended resource of a green public space. This
open space were protected from resource provided for the “invention”
Above: Published plans for sale of lots in Summerville private development. of a grid of boulevards, occasion-
and Aiken, 1896. Southern Railway archive. The solution was to enlarge, still ally with ordered series of trees, but
Opposite: Contemporary view of sandy lane in Aiken. further, what had already been an its spaces were often realized more
Photo by author. ideal: wide streets, and the exten- simply as streets through the forest.
Places 20.3 71
ing its stations between Summerville
and Aiken. But the railroad’s con-
certed attention to Aiken, an entirely
new settlement on undeveloped
land, gives it a claim to being the first
railroad town. Within that category,
however, Aiken proved exceptional,
thanks to the ambitions and planning
that were integral to its founding.
As in later railroad towns, Sum-
merville and Aiken served the real
estate speculation made possible by,
and for the benefit of, the found-
ing railroad company. However, the
South Carolina Railroad attempted
to build communities of high envi-
ronmental quality. Summerville and
Aiken were intended as places of qual-
ity—destinations and communities,
not just opportunities for economic
gain. Aiken succeeded.15
Morphological Lessons
In earlier publications, I have
attempted to make the case for the
urban plan as a resource, relying
especially on the plan of Savannah
as an example. Savannah requires an
extended analysis that is not possible
here. Consider simply that Savan- resources can be strong or weak, and Despite their radically different
nah’s intricate “ward” system of as I have argued here, Summerville sizes, Aiken shares with Manhattan
blocks and streets (generating further revealed the weakness of the undiffer- the advantages of rectangular blocks
distinctive conditions through the entiated square grid. The same may and of establishing differentiation in
repetition of wards) leads, both by be said, I would argue, for Columbia, location and mobility that assist in
positive resource and by constraint, South Carolina (despite the hopes of making wise decisions regarding the
to contributive, mutually reinforcing Mr. Ramsay). use of urban space. Can it be an acci-
location decisions.16 On the other hand, seemingly dent that their block sizes are identi-
Summerville played out the case simple plans, such as that of Man- cal (though their orientation and
of the undifferentiated square grid, hattan, reveal, upon examination, parceling vary)?
made more special in its concep- distinctive conditions: the difference The ubiquity of exceptionally
tualization as a checkerboard. Yet, of street widths in the two dominant broad streets in Aiken is a special
directions; further differences of case that one would not expect to be
street width at intervals throughout generalized. However, those broad,
Above: Comparison of the “ward” system of the grid; differences of block size and treed streets do also point to an
Savannah, Georgia, 1732 (top left), with the block of lot size and orientation. Such varia- issue of general significance. There
systems of Manhattan, 1811 (top right), New tions provide important resources for are private and public interests and
Summerville, 1832 (bottom left), and Aiken, 1834 decisions about movement systems private and public rights; the develop-
(bottom right). Shaded areas represent actual public and land use during the development ment of Aiken versus that of Sum-
green areas. MIT, Urban Morphology Group. of a city. merville demonstrates that intelligent
consideration of goals and means The SCC&RR Co. went through a series of mergers. wintering, wealthy, horsey northerners. They built
is essential if the desired relation of I examined its archives in 1982 in Washington, D.C., their estates and polo grounds in the late nineteenth
public and private interests is to be when the corporate parent was the Southern Railway; and early twentieth centuries largely to the south and
achieved and sustained. today the corporation is Norfolk Southern. east of the town grid. It is nonetheless plausible that
6. Plans of Summerville and Aiken in this article, the attractive historic town seeded this development.
Notes along with others, were found in the Southern Railway 16. Stanford Anderson, “Savannah and the Issue
1. Photographs of Aiken are ca. 1980, except that of Archives. Others exist in city offices in South Carolina. of Precedent: City Plan as Resource,” in Ralph
Laurens Street, which is 2004. 7. Quoted and discussed in John Reps, “Thomas Bennett, ed., Settlements in the Americas: Cross-Cultural
2. John Reps, The Making of Urban America: A History Jefferson’s Checkerboard Towns,” Journal of the Society Perspectives (Newark, DL: University of Delaware
of City Planning in the United States (Princeton, NJ: of Architectural Historians, Vol.20, No. 3 (Oct. 1961), Press, 1993), pp. 110-44.
Princeton University Press, 1965). pp. 108-14.
3. City of Aiken Web site: http://www.aiken.net/index. 8. David Ramsay, The History of South Carolina from
php?page=visitors; accessed, with variations, in 2004 Its First Settlement in 1670 (2 vols., Charleston: David
and 2008. Longworth, for the author, 1809), pp. II: 101-2.
4. Leaving aside some short railroads using draught 9. Ibid., p. 103.
animals, the first U.S. railroad was the Baltimore and 10. Southern Railway Archive, indenture of R. J.
Ohio. Chartered in 1827, its first division opened Mosser (sp?), August 17, 1831.
in 1830, running fourteen miles, from Baltimore to 11. The problem was solved only by a later, significant
Ellicotts Mills (now Ellicott City), Maryland. James D. railroad cut through the town (recognizable in the
Dilts, The Great Road: The Building of the Baltimore and modern plan, fig. 1) that has had remarkably little
Ohio, the Nation’s First Railroad, 1828-1853 (Stanford, effect on the experience of the town.
CA: Stanford University Press, 1993). 12. See note 1.
The South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company 13. Robert Fishman, in his Bourgeois Utopia (New
had clear strategies to build a long-line railroad in York: Basic Books, 1985), pp. 126 ff, describes
short order. It set a course on a relatively straight Frederick Law Olmsted’s 1868 plan for Riverside,
line, from Summerville to Aiken, through rather west of Chicago, with its curving, tree-lined streets
undeveloped country, without serving existing and parks, as best expressing “the idea of the bourgeois
settlements. The route was largely through pine forest. utopia.” Riverside was on the Burlington line, but
Trees cut to clear the way provided timber for trestles, not a development of the railroad. In his chapter
ties, and even the rails, when supplemented with a “The Classic Suburb: The Railroad Suburbs of
steel strap on top. Ultimately, the effort failed, and Philadelphia,” Fishman’s main example is Chestnut
Hamburg became a ghost town; the site is now part of Hill of the late 1870s, a development instigated by a
North Augusta, South Carolina. railroad executive, but not a railroad project.
5. Horatio Allen was schooled in engineering at A remarkable example is Bedford Park, begun in 1875
Columbia College (now University), in New York west of London, which is often termed the first garden
City, graduating in 1823. While in England and suburb. Relying on a recently built railroad line, the
Europe for the Delaware and Hudson, he pursued developer employed a casual, quite compact plan
railway engineering research assiduously, but also that gained much of its renown from the quality of its
personal interests in cultural matters. After building architecture, primarily under the design guidance of
the SCC&RR line, he continued in a distinguished Richard Norman Shaw. See Margaret Jones Bolsterli,
engineering career. Horatio Allen, The Railroad Era: The Early Community at Bedford Park: “Corporate
First Five Years of Its Development (New York: 1884); Happiness” in the First Garden Suburb (London:
Samuel Melancthon Derrick, Centennial History Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
of South Carolina Railroad (Columbia, SC: State 14. For example, John Reps presents the bereft
Company, 1930); Anon., “Man on an Iron Road: The “Standard Town Plat” of the Illinois Central
Story of Horatio Allen and the South Carolina Canal Associates from the early 1850s. See his The Making of
and Rail Road Company,” Ties [Southern Railway Urban America, chap. 14, “Towns by the Tracks.”
System Magazine] (1958), reprint (Washington, D.C.: 15. With the realization of north-south rail service,
Southern Railway, 1970). the real efflorescence of Aiken came as a result of
Places 20.3 73