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IVOL. 42

when expanding its railyard in South Baltimore.162 But Preston pro-
posed to use the strategy in a more calculated fashion. The Commis-
sion on Housing Conditions would convert "the worst infected blocks"
into parks.163

The first public slum clearance project provided for "the parking
of St. Paul and Courtland Streets" between Lexington and Centre
Streets. The city began in 1914 to buy up properties that were used as
third-rate rooming houses and cheap flats.164 Eventually, in 1917, pro-
ceeds from a harbor loan were used to hire landscape architect Thomas
Hastings, who replaced Courtland Street with a sunken garden and
widened St. Paul Street. The project was intended to improve the traf-
fic flow, as well as to eliminate a downtown slum.164 When completed
in 1919, some Baltimoreans called it Preston's Folly, others called it
Preston Gardens.166

Hence, in the aftermath of Buchanan v. Warley, the Baltimore plan
for segregation had come to consist of two discrete strategies — clear-
ance and containment. Clearance was used to remove Negro slums
from areas where they were not wanted; containment was used to pre-
vent the spread of black residential districts.

The plan for segregation went into operation at a tumultuous time.
Following World War I, Baltimore was undergoing dramatic growth.
In 1918 the city had added a new annex which tripled its area. Be-
tween 1920 and 1930 the city's population rose from 730,000 to one
million. In that period, housing starts peaked at 6,000 per year, most of
them in the new area.

Along with this growth came a redefinition of "race spaces." Ne-
groes continued to pour into Baltimore from the countryside, but re-
strictive immigration laws had stopped the influx of Europeans.
Population in the new annex doubled.167 Although the white middle
class was in the vanguard of the exodus to the suburbs, by 1930 they
had been joined by the foreign-born. The Negro population in the old
city increased from fifteen percent to thirty percent, while white popu-
lation in the old city decreased by one-half.168 Baltimore was becom-
ing a black center surrounded by a white ring. The racial Social

- 162. See supra note 10.

163. See Need for Better Housing for Negroes Revealed m Tuberculosit Statistics* 5 BALTI-
MORE MUN. J. 5 (Aug. 10, 1917).

164. Kelly, "The Birth of Preston Gardens," Baltimore Sun, May 9, 1954 (found in verti-
cal file Parks, Baltimore, Preston Gardens, in Enoch Pratt Free Library).

165. The Parking of St. Paul and Courtland Streets, 7 BALTIMORE MUN. J. 5 (May 23,
1919); see also 5 BALTIMORE MUN. J. 4 (Oct. 5, 1917).

166. Kelly, supra note 164.

167. S. OLSON, supra note 8, at 302-03.

168. Id. at 324-25.