Cascade History

Southwest Connector Expressway / Langhorn Street Exit

The Highway That Almost Was: The History of the Southwest Connector

Introduction: The Concrete Cure for Traffic Strangulation

In the mid-twentieth century, Atlanta city planners viewed asphalt as the ultimate cure for urban growing pains. As the metropolitan population swelled and automobile ownership skyrocketed, the municipal government became obsessed with preventing what politicians ominously referred to as “traffic strangulation.”[1] To keep the city moving, planners proposed a massive, interconnected web of expressways designed to slice directly through existing residential neighborhoods.

One of the most ambitious and ultimately contentious of these proposed routes was the Southwest Connector. Designed to be a high-speed, multi-lane artery, the connector was intended to link Marietta Boulevard in the north directly to the Cascade Avenue [now Cascade Road] and Gordon Road [now Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard] intersection in the south.[2] While it was pitched as a vital infrastructural necessity, the proposed route threatened to bulldoze through the heart of Atlanta’s Black educational and residential institutions. By analyzing municipal bond records, city planning maps, and the fierce protests of local civil rights leaders, the history of the Southwest Connector reveals how a grand expressway dream was systematically dismantled by community resistance, ultimately leaving behind the truncated thoroughfare known today as Langhorn Street.

Chapter 1: The 1955 Warning and the Master Plan

The push for the Southwest Connector was born out of the rapid failure of Atlanta’s earliest highway experiments. By April 1955, the Atlanta Traffic and Safety Council issued a stark warning that the city’s primary expressway system was “already becoming outmoded.”[3] State Highway Chairman Walter Blasingame pointed out that the central road was originally designed to handle 15,000 vehicles a day, but the traffic count had exploded from 17,963 in January 1953 to a staggering 46,192 cars in January 1955.[4]

Despite this glaring evidence that new highways simply induced more traffic, city planners pushed forward with even larger proposals. Blasingame noted that while $32 million had already been spent on the existing expressway, several major legs were still unprogrammed, explicitly listing the “southwest connector” alongside the east, southeast, and west legs as vital future projects.[5], [6]

Chapter 2: The 1962 Bond Issue and the Threat to Fair Street

The financial foundation for the Southwest Connector was laid during a massive municipal funding push. In July 1962, the Fulton County Commission proposed an $80 million joint city-county bond issue. A marquee item on this list was a new $2,315,000 Southwest Connector, which County Public Works Director Turner McDonald called “the most important project on the county’s list.”[7], [8]

Historical Context: The Threat to the AUC
The original routing for this 1962 proposal was disastrous for the Black intelligentsia. The plan called to extend the terminus of the Techwood Viaduct over Northside Drive, widen Fair Street to four lanes, and provide a new four-lane extension from Fair Street Southwest directly to Cascade Avenue.[9] Widening Fair Street would have driven a massive highway directly through the Atlanta University Center, physically splitting the campuses of the historically Black colleges.

The academic and civil rights communities immediately recognized the existential threat. Robert A. Thompson of the Atlanta Urban League and Dick Forbes, the chief planner in the city planning department, fiercely objected to the route. Thompson argued that widening Fair Street would “defeat the dreams of a unified campus for the Atlanta University Center colleges,” suggesting Hunter Street [now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive] as a less destructive alternative.[10]

The Black civic elite leveraged their immense voting power to protect the universities. The Atlanta Negro Voters League (AVL) and the Westside Voters League threatened to withhold their endorsement of the entire $80 million bond package unless the Fair Street route was scrapped. Facing a total collapse of the city’s infrastructure funding, Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. and county officials called an emergency meeting at the Central Branch YMCA on July 17, 1962.[11] The meeting was attended by a powerhouse delegation of Black leaders, including Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, A.T. Walden, C.R. Yates, T.M. Alexander, and Rev. William Holmes Borders.[12]

The political hardball worked. The AVL secured a “firm commitment” from the city that the Fair Street portion of the Southwest Connector would be completely abandoned.[13] With the campuses saved, the Black voters leagues officially endorsed the bond issue, reminding their constituents on election day that “Fears that Fair Street would be tampered with in connection with the proposed Southwest Connector have been abated by a commitment to the Voters League that this will not happen.”[14]

Chapter 3: The 1963 Redesign and the Western Bypass

With the Fair Street route abandoned, city engineers were forced to shift the highway further west. In the spring of 1963, the city unveiled the redesigned Southwest Connector. The new plan called for a $1,700,000 four-lane roadway to be built between the Cascade Road and Gordon Road area and the four-lane Marietta Boulevard, including a major interchange with the new Atlanta-Birmingham Interstate Highway (I-20) that was under construction.[15]

The revised route was intended to relieve the serious traffic problems on Northside Drive.[16] However, the highway was also intended to serve as a hard, physical boundary for future city planning. In April 1965, Earl Metzger, the Atlanta Housing Authority director of redevelopment, officially designated the proposed Southwest Connector as the western boundary line for the massive 14.5-acre West End urban renewal project, utilizing the unbuilt highway to define the limits of their slum clearance efforts.[17]

The city’s vision for this corridor was staggering in its scope. According to a comprehensive planning report published in October 1965, the Southwest Connector was not just a standalone highway; it was designed to be the western anchor of a massive “inner loop” that would encircle the southern half of the city.[18] Planners proposed connecting University Avenue to a White Street extension at Lee Street with a grade separation and interchange at Lee, Murphy Avenue, and the Georgia Railroad.[19] This $2.6 million project was explicitly designed as “a section of the inner loop to eventually connect the Southwest Connector to Boulevard, an east-west tie on the south side of the Central Business District.”[20]

The ultimate ambition for the Southwest Connector was revealed in December 1968 by the Atlanta Area Transportation Study (AATS). Planners proposed re-building the Brookwood Interchange to continue Interstate 85 southward on the west side of the downtown area to link directly with the programmed Southwest Connector.[21] This massive undertaking would have given Atlanta two north-south expressways out of downtown, transforming the Southwest Connector into a major interstate bypass.[22]

Chapter 4: Schools, Tennis Courts, and Community Resistance

While the universities had been saved, the new 1963 route still threatened vital Black neighborhoods and recreational spaces. As the city moved forward with acquiring the land for the highway, the resistance expanded to local clergy and neighborhood advocates.

In October 1964, a highly organized delegation of Black citizens appeared before the Fulton County Commission to formally demand the relocation of the Southwest Connector.[23] The delegation was headed by Rev. J.A. Middleton, a prominent civil rights leader who had previously co-chaired the All-Citizens Committee for Better City Planning during the fight against the Peyton Road Wall barricades. Rev. Middleton argued that the proposed street would cut directly adjacent to the E.R. Carter Elementary School. He warned the commissioners that placing a high-speed connector next to a primary school would create an unacceptable safety hazard for the young children of the neighborhood.[24] College Professor G.L. Chandler, a member of the delegation, suggested that the route should be changed to run parallel to the railroad instead, noting that the proposed route would run through a “very dense residential area.”[25]

The highway project also threatened the city’s recreational spaces. In June 1967, City of Atlanta Parks Department Director Jack C. Delius and members of the Atlanta Parks Committee officially petitioned the State Highway Department to divert the Southwest Connector from its planned course.[26] Delius pointed out that the highway, as it was currently planned, would run directly through the Washington Park tennis center, destroying a vital recreational amenity for the Black community. He estimated it would cost the city up to $200,000 to replace the courts.[27]

The response from the state highlighted the ruthless pragmatism of highway construction. State Highway Director Jim Gillis bluntly dismissed the parks department’s concerns. “What the city fails to realize is that it received a lot of funds from the doing of a highway,” Gillis stated, suggesting the city simply relocate the tennis center or close it entirely if necessary.[28] The threat to the park lingered for years; in August 1970, local reports noted that while the Washington Park Tennis Center was undergoing repairs, the proposed roadway for the Southwest Connector still went “right through the tennis center.”[29]

Chapter 5: Bottlenecks and the Central Area Study

Faced with relentless opposition from civil rights leaders and even their own parks department, the municipal government found it nearly impossible to secure the necessary land. By May 1964, Fulton County Manager Alan F. Kiepper reported to the commissioners that the acquisition of right-of-ways for the Southwest Connector was causing a “major bottleneck” that was severely delaying the entire $15 million county bond program.[30], [31] Kiepper noted that the clearing of titles was delayed due to the large number of parcels involved and the complex searching of property titles that had changed hands many times, though the county had managed to acquire 114 of the 148 parcels needed.[32]

As the delays mounted, the broader philosophy of urban planning in Atlanta began to shift. Planners slowly realized that carving massive expressways through the heart of the city was destroying the urban fabric. This realization was formalized in December 1971 with the publication of the Central Area Study. The comprehensive report heavily criticized the existing central area street system as a “chaotic melange of discontinuous roads, un-related and short one-way streets, odd intersections caused by changes in the street grid, and street widths which vary with little relationship to traffic demands.”[33]

To solve this, the study recommended abandoning the grand visions of new expressways and instead focusing on “street improvements” to “normalize the street system.”[34] The study explicitly proposed downgrading the Southwest Connector project, recommending only the extension of Langhorn Street from Oak Street to Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard (Gordon Street), and the extension of Oak Street from Langhorn Street to Ashby Street.[35] The grand vision of a high-speed artery linking Marietta Boulevard to Cascade Road was officially dead.

Conclusion: The Langhorn Legacy and the Money Running Out

While the full, high-speed expressway envisioned in the 1963 master plan was never fully realized due to the relentless community pushback, a truncated portion of the project was completed. In March 1966, Fulton County officials proudly noted that the “Langhorn Street section of Southwest Connector” was moving toward completion as part of the 1963 Progress Bond Issue.[36] By June 1967, the county manager confirmed that the Southwest Connector from Gordon Street to Interstate 20 on the north was “complete and in use,” while the rest of the connector toward Cascade and Campbellton Roads remained under construction.[37]

“The ultimate fate of the northern section of the highway was revealed in a starkly pragmatic exchange in the April 6, 1970, edition of The Atlanta Constitution’s ‘Action Line’ column. A resident wrote in to ask when the short length of the Southwest Connector between the I-20 exit and Maddox Park would finally be tied together so traffic could reach Marietta Boulevard. The newspaper’s response was blunt: ‘It’ll be a while. Fulton County tells us that the road runs out because the money ran out.’”[38], [39]

Public Works Director Turner McDonald confirmed that it would take an entirely new bond issue before the connector could be finished, an issue that was not expected anytime soon.[40]

Today, Langhorn Street SW serves as a primary exit off Interstate 20. However, it is not the massive, city-slicing artery that midcentury planners envisioned. Because the highway was never completed, Langhorn Street exists today as an overbuilt, underutilized remnant of a failed infrastructure project. To the south, it connects drivers to Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard, Cascade Avenue, and White Street, providing a primary exit for the Westview neighborhood. To the north, the route abruptly ends at Westview Drive SW, leaving the grand connection to Marietta Boulevard permanently severed because, as the county bluntly admitted in 1970, the money ran out. For the residents of Southwest Atlanta, this truncated street stands as a concrete monument to the era when the community successfully fought back against the bulldozers to save their schools, their parks, and their universities.

Related Reading:

Footnotes & Citations (Click to Expand)
Citations:
  1. “BONDS’ AIM TO PREVENT ‘TRAFFIC STRANGULATION’,” The Atlanta Journal, May 9, 1963, 1. ↑
  2. “Bonds Aid Traffic,” The Atlanta Journal, May 9, 1963, 32. ↑
  3. “Expressway ‘Is Becoming Outmoded’,” The Atlanta Constitution, April 20, 1955, 1. ↑
  4. “Expressway ‘Becoming Outmoded’,” The Atlanta Constitution, April 20, 1955, 8. ↑
  5. “Expressway ‘Becoming Outmoded’,” The Atlanta Constitution, April 20, 1955, 8. ↑
  6. “City Growth Outpaces Expressway’s Progress,” The Atlanta Constitution, April 22, 1955, 4. ↑
  7. “20 Highway, Street Projects In Proposed $80-Million Bond Issue,” Atlanta Daily World, July 11, 1962, 2. ↑
  8. “Voters League Names Committee To Study $80 Million Bond Plan,” Atlanta Daily World, July 15, 1962, 1. ↑
  9. “20 Highway, Street Projects In Proposed $80-Million Bond Issue,” Atlanta Daily World, July 11, 1962, 2. ↑
  10. “Voters League Names Committee To Study $80 Million Bond Plan,” Atlanta Daily World, July 15, 1962, 1. ↑
  11. “Leaders Confer With Mayor; Pledge Strong Support In Bond Vote,” Atlanta Daily World, July 18, 1962, 1. ↑
  12. “Leaders Confer With Mayor; Pledge Strong Support In Bond Vote,” Atlanta Daily World, July 18, 1962, 1. ↑
  13. “Two Meetings This Week On Bond Issue,” Atlanta Daily World, July 24, 1962, 1. ↑
  14. “Vote For The Bond Issue Today,” Atlanta Daily World, August 2, 1962, 6. ↑
  15. “Traffic Improvements Top Fulton County Bond Program,” Atlanta Daily World, April 26, 1963, 2. ↑
  16. “Traffic Improvements Top Fulton County Bond Program,” Atlanta Daily World, April 26, 1963, 2. ↑
  17. “Huge Renewal Project Speeded for West End,” The Atlanta Constitution, April 23, 1965, 9. ↑
  18. “Plans Exist for a Magic Change,” The Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution, October 31, 1965, 41. ↑
  19. “Plans Exist for a Magic Change,” The Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution, October 31, 1965, 41. ↑
  20. “Plans Exist for a Magic Change,” The Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution, October 31, 1965, 41. ↑
  21. “New Transit Path Annoys Southside,” The Atlanta Constitution, December 16, 1968, 10. ↑
  22. “New Transit Path Annoys Southside,” The Atlanta Constitution, December 16, 1968, 10. ↑
  23. “Negroes Ask Fulton To Relocate Road,” The Atlanta Journal, October 8, 1964, 2. ↑
  24. “Negroes Ask Fulton To Relocate Road,” The Atlanta Journal, October 8, 1964, 2. ↑
  25. “Negroes Ask Fulton To Relocate Road,” The Atlanta Journal, October 8, 1964, 2. ↑
  26. “Divert Connector, Parks Chief Asks,” The Atlanta Journal, June 7, 1967, 49. ↑
  27. “Divert Connector, Parks Chief Asks,” The Atlanta Journal, June 7, 1967, 49. ↑
  28. “Divert Connector, Parks Chief Asks,” The Atlanta Journal, June 7, 1967, 49. ↑
  29. “Arrington has Dept. repair tennis center,” The Atlanta Voice, August 16, 1970, 9. ↑
  30. “RIGHT-OF-WAYS CAUSE BOTTLENECK,” The Atlanta Journal, May 21, 1964, 2. ↑
  31. “Delay Here On Right of Way Told,” The Atlanta Constitution, May 21, 1964, 17. ↑
  32. “Delay Here On Right of Way Told,” The Atlanta Constitution, May 21, 1964, 17. ↑
  33. “A Plan to Make Atlanta More Mobile,” The Atlanta Journal, December 13, 1971, 16. ↑
  34. “A Plan to Make Atlanta More Mobile,” The Atlanta Journal, December 13, 1971, 16. ↑
  35. “A Plan to Make Atlanta More Mobile,” The Atlanta Journal, December 13, 1971, 16. ↑
  36. “BUILDING… for a better tomorrow,” The Atlanta Journal, March 6, 1966, 175. ↑
  37. “Fulton Nears Bond Wrap Up,” The Atlanta Journal, June 25, 1967, 28. ↑
  38. “ACTION LINE,” The Atlanta Constitution, April 6, 1970, 1A. ↑
  39. “ACTION LINE,” The Atlanta Constitution, April 6, 1970, 2A. ↑
  40. “ACTION LINE,” The Atlanta Constitution, April 6, 1970, 2A. ↑
Comprehensive Bibliography (Click to Expand)
  • Atlanta Daily World. “20 Highway, Street Projects In Proposed $80-Million Bond Issue.” July 11, 1962.
  • Atlanta Daily World. “Leaders Confer With Mayor; Pledge Strong Support In Bond Vote: Univ. Center Presidents Get Fair Street Promise.” July 18, 1962.
  • Atlanta Daily World. “Traffic Improvements Top Fulton County Bond Program.” April 26, 1963.
  • Atlanta Daily World. “Two Meetings This Week On Bond Issue.” July 24, 1962.
  • Atlanta Daily World. “Vote For The Bond Issue Today.” August 2, 1962.
  • Atlanta Daily World. “Voters League Names Committee To Study $80 Million Bond Plan.” July 15, 1962.
  • The Atlanta Constitution. “ACTION LINE.” April 6, 1970.
  • The Atlanta Constitution. “City Growth Outpaces Expressway’s Progress.” April 22, 1955.
  • The Atlanta Constitution. “Delay Here On Right of Way Told.” May 21, 1964.
  • The Atlanta Constitution. “Expressway ‘Becoming Outmoded’.” April 20, 1955.
  • The Atlanta Constitution. “Expressway ‘Is Becoming Outmoded’.” April 20, 1955.
  • The Atlanta Constitution. “Huge Renewal Project Speeded for West End.” April 23, 1965.
  • The Atlanta Constitution. “New Transit Path Annoys Southside.” December 16, 1968.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “A Plan to Make Atlanta More Mobile.” December 13, 1971.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “BONDS’ AIM TO PREVENT ‘TRAFFIC STRANGULATION’.” May 9, 1963.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “Bonds Aid Traffic.” May 9, 1963.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “BUILDING… for a better tomorrow.” March 6, 1966.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “Divert Connector, Parks Chief Asks.” June 7, 1967.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “Fulton Nears Bond Wrap Up.” June 25, 1967.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “Negroes Ask Fulton To Relocate Road.” October 8, 1964.
  • The Atlanta Journal. “RIGHT-OF-WAYS CAUSE BOTTLENECK.” May 21, 1964.
  • The Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution. “Plans Exist for a Magic Change.” October 31, 1965.
  • The Atlanta Voice. “Arrington has Dept. repair tennis center.” August 16, 1970.
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History is a continuous process of discovery. This project relies on historical newspapers, municipal records, and archival documents, which can sometimes contain historical biases, omissions, or factual errors of their era. This site is a living document. If you have primary sources, family records, or corrections that add to this history, please leave a comment or share your knowledge.

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