As the railroads declined and Americans turned to the automobile for transportation in the 1950s, many employees moved away. When the Cypress Freeway, a double-decker freeway connecting the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge with the Nimitz Freeway, was built in the 1950s above Cypress Street, it effectively split the neighborhood in half and isolated it from downtown Oakland. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, block after block was razed and thousands of residents were displaced for the building of the massive Oakland Main Post Office, the West Oakland BART Station, and the Acorn Plaza housing projects. These projects coincided with a period of economic decline characterized by unemployment, poverty, and urban blight.