DTM gets designated, Alderman gets benched

A couple of stories this week sent me down historic rabbit holes…

DTM Gets National Historic Designation

Now in its fifth decade, the Downtown Mall has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Pretty remarkable considering many thought it would never survive.

“It’s amazing that our mall survived when so many of those other malls failed,” I told the Daily Progress last June when the DTM received its state designation. “And ours came close. It was languishing for quite a while before there was a resurgence in the ‘90s.”

Indeed, our mall was poised to join the estimated 85 percent of first-generation pedestrian malls built in urban centers that were scrapped and re-opened to traffic.

Main Street, 1963. This photograph by Ed Roseberry shows the 200 and 300 blocks of East Main Street (looking west from about Fourth St.)

“When I first came to Charlottesville in 1981 there were tumbleweeds rolling down the mall,” wro…