Journalist . Writer . Storyteller
The Start of Skid Row
No one called them skid rows yet, but these neighborhoods were emerging in cities in the United States before the Civil War, with workhouses and hospitals and philanthropic orders. There were plenty of agricultural workers and immigrants looking for jobs. After the Civil War, war veterans, many of them disabled, large numbers of immigrants and blacks from the south all contributed to increased unemployment and the establishment in American cities of soup kitchens and emergency services.
By 1900, most U.S. cities had their own skid rows. They had to. Skid rows contained the cheapest pool of temporary labor available. These were strong men. Tough men. Single men. Some didn’t want to work but most did. Long labor pool lines with preference for regulars have always been a complaint of job-seekers in skid rows. The men worked on the railroad, for lumber companies, in the seaports, as field hands under the sun picking fruit and vegetables and harvesting grain. And they built the first buildings at a time when there wasn’t the machinery to build industry like there is today. They did it by gripping a tool and wheel barrowing earth and mortar, the old fashioned way to rock-hard abs.
These men, who worked for as little as their employers could possibly pay, needed a place to live and so skid row’s low-rent, single-room hotels, shared bathrooms, and cheap taverns made sense. These men were transient, known as hobos, moving from place to place, following the work, escaping from family and responsibilities. They worked hard and played hard.
In downtown L.A. and around the massive railroad terminals of Chicago’s West Madison Street and the docks near New York’s Bowery the men lived the same lives.
After World War II, the population of skid rows declined because many had joined the army or worked industrial jobs in the war effort, like everybody else. The GI Bill of Rights and other social welfare benefits helped many move out of skid row. And because the railroads had been built, and the ports too, there wasn’t as much a need for transient, migratory workers anymore. Important people in the large American cities saw this and moved to tear down their skid rows.
Chicago shut down its skid row missions and saloons and bulldozed and gut its single-room occupancy hotels. In its place went expensive apartment buildings. New York’s Bowery has also become a high-class neighborhood. The people tossed on the street because they no longer could afford the rent aren’t to be found in the history of these cities.
Neither are they found in the history of Los Angeles, although Los Angeles did not bulldoze its skid row. The reason was L.A. had such a large skid row, with so many desperate people taking the railroad to the end of the line. City and business leaders feared what demolishing the entire skid row would mean for the downtown office and department store buildings across the street. L.A.’s skid row was too big to take down altogether. So instead, city and business leaders decided to chip away at skid row, and they have not stopped chipping away at it and the people who live there.
1955 photo credit to USC Digital Archives.
Sources for this article include interviews; Central City East and its Fifth Street Skid Row: A Study of Community Social Structure and Feasible Redevelopment by Ronald C. Vander Kooi, Jan. 1969; Near Downtown’s Glitter Lies a Civic Problem by Carla Rivera, 2005, L.A. Times; Central City Development Committee, Summary Central City East Project, undated, late 1960s; Bummed Out: How Skid Row went from “The Land of the Living Dead” to Cappuccinos and Condos by David Witter, 2010, New City Street Smart Chicago; Skid Row to Luxury Gold? by Brendan Flaherty, 2008, The Cooperator