The Civic Center is bordered on the east by Johnson Street. It then occurred to me that the downtown street grid includes the names of several presidents, starting with Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, etc. The list continues eastward all the way to Cleveland.
Here’s the question: Couldn’t the Amarillo street-namers way back when come up with names other than those of some very undistinguished U.S. presidents? The place where I work, for example, sits between Van Buren and Harrison streets. The “Harrison” in this context is William Henry Harrison, who served as president for precisely one month. But he caught pneumonia on inauguration day and spent his entire time in office in a hospital bed before he died.
The “Johnson” for whom the street next to the Civic Center is named is Andrew Johnson, the first president ever impeached, and who came within a single Senate trial vote of being thrown out of office. For crying out loud, if we’re going to name a street after a “President Johnson,” why not honor a Texan, Lyndon Johnson, with a street? Oh, I forgot: LBJ hated the Panhandle, as many people have said.
I concur that there were significant — even great — men honored along this section of Amarillo’s street grid. Washington, Adams (the father, not the son), Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Monroe and Lincoln all stand tall in the pantheon of past presidents. As a president, Grant was a great military man, but that’s it.
Hayes, Pierce, Fillmore, Buchanan, Polk, Tyler, Taylor, Arthur, Garfield and Cleveland? I’m sure their families loved these men very much.
Fiddlesticks.