Roll of the Dice
Thank you for devoting space to the increasing traffic pressure that City development policy is exerting on streets least able to bear it [“Fifeville, a traffic hazard,” Government News, September 15]. Your focal point—the intersection of Fifth Street S.W. and Dice Street (really two intersections rather than one)—illustrates the problem particularly well. And it also offers an excellent history lesson that should have informed the “density” debate long ere now.
Dice Street takes a confusing and endangering jog at Fifth Street S.W. because the two sections of there Dice were created at different times for different reasons. The leg of Dice Street east of Fifth Street is a function of a plat drawn in 1825 for Alexander Garrett, who sought to sell relatively small parcels from his large estate. That plat featured “potential streets” of which the future Dice Street was one. At the time, Garrett chose to donate two of his plat’s creations—Ridge Street (then “the Ridge road”) and Fifth Street S.W. (then “the new road to William Hening’s old stillhouse”)—as public thoroughfares. The leg of Dice Street west of Fifth is a function of a deed provision made by Rev. James Fife in 1860. Upon selling a small parcel of land for the building of what is now 513 Dice St., he retained for himself what he described as an “alley” to give his almost 400-acre farm an extra outlet to what was by then being called “the Old Lynchburg Road.”
There was no reason to align the two narrow rights-of-way that would so much later be considered sections of the same street. They were not then in a town, just near one. And the Fifeville subdivision—the eastern boundary of which was today’s Seven-and-a-Half Street—would not be platted for sale by Rev. Fife’s son, Robert Herndon Fife, until the late 1880s and early 1890s. (N.B. The blocks bounded by Ridge Street, Cherry Avenue, Fifth Street, and the railroad tracks have never, ever been in Fifeville. They were, however, shifted into the City-designated Fifeville Neighborhood just in time to use their mislabeling as an excuse to systematically exclude people who live within sight of the Ridge-Cherry intersection from discussion of what happens on that crucial corner.)
In sum, City policy is inflicting intense 21st-century traffic pressure on “infrastructure” that was intended for use by 19th-century horses and their people. That being the case, City promise of “a holistic neighborhood study” can offer little hope to those of us whose lives line those antique roadways.
Antoinette W. Roades
Charlottesville