Autopsies are not just for humans. They’re also for houses.
Thanks to a remarkable exhibit, “Beneath I-280: Excavating a Neighborhood Lost to San José Freeways,” we can now look at several former houses that used to sit where the freeway now exists. Even if you don’t want to sift through boxes of appraisals, documents, Caltrans Right of Way Assessments and aerial maps of neighborhoods destroyed by the 280-87 interchange, even if you don’t want to pore through all of that stuff, you can now visit the Jennifer and Phil DiNapoli Gallery on the second floor of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Main Library. Huge photos of long-gone houses, enlarged and framed, grace the walls, replete with respective street addresses that don’t exist anymore. Five entire nonexistent blocks of Delmas Ave have been reconstructed along one wall.
Throughout the show we see more than just houses. We see service stations. A corner market or two. Successful working-class families and churches. Bucolic suburban happiness. Children playing on the sidewalk…