001Welcome everybody. My name is Mina Jane and I'm the director of the Ashlin Public Library. I'm really excited to be here with David Crew is going to be talking about Route 128, why we love to hate it, um, and so many other things. So, um, he's going to be talking about that in just a minute. Before we get there, as I mentioned, please use the chat to let us know where you're coming from and what you might know about 128 already. Um, in the meantime, I'd like to just say a couple things. One is I I'd like to thank the friends of the Ashlin Public Library for supporting all of our programming. We could not do this kind of stuff without them. In this particular program, we also are um collaborating with a 10 libraries
002in Massachusetts. And I'm so excited because I feel like when libraries get together and work together, we make magic as we have today. So we have libraries in Tukesbury uh patrons coming from Tukesbury, Beverly, Sherburn, Belmont, Norwood, Stowe, Wayland, Denim, Needam, and Draket as well as anybody who randomly heard about this program. So we're very excited to welcome you from all over the state to this incredible what I think is going to be an incredibly interesting program because we have hosted David Crew before and I know that for a fact. So um if you have questions, please put them in the Q&A. chat is for chatter and for any tech issues. I'll be paying attention to that. We will be taking questions at the end of the program and I will be moderating those for
003David. So, um without further ado, I'm going to tell you that David is has a masters in computer engineering from Boston University. He's worked as a copywriter, computer programmer, radio producer, radio engineer, and for a few years as a spokesman and web master for the big dig. So, he knows what he talks about. So, um, his book called Building, uh, Route 128 is, um, is what he's going to be talking about today, but he has several other books, including his most current book, Inseparable, which is based on three inmates who, um, escaped from Alcatraz. And I would love to have David back at some point to talk about that. So, um, like I said, without further ado, I'm gonna hand it to David. Welcome, David. Thank you so much for being here with us, and
004I look forward to this talk. Well, thank thank you. Thank you very much. Make sure that I'm unmuted. Can you all hear me? Yes, we can. Fantastic. Okay. Because as as I've demonstrated to Amina, uh having a degree in engineering doesn't mean that I can always use Zoom. Thank you everybody. And thank you to all the libraries who've gotten together and uh put together this presentation today. Uh yeah. So in 2003 uh I wrote a book with a a Boston developer named Yanni Cypus. We both found each other through our interest in the local highway system and we put together this book on Route 128. We call it the road we love to hate because like many of you and by the way the best thing about Zoom is that none of us have to
005sit in traffic on this road. And where I you probably often as I do wonder how the heck did we get a road that is so apparently inadequate to the task of getting us from one place to another. By the way, your computer's not frising out. I've turned off the video so we can all focus on these slides because I think the story of this highway was which is inexraably tied to the building of all the other highways in and around Boston is a fascinating one. And I'm going to talk about where the ideas for Route 128 came from, why is it where it is, and what's in store for the future. Now, to talk about the future, I think we first need to go back to the past. All roads lead to Rome, or
006as we can see in this map from the early 1900s, Boston. The region's transportation system has traditionally been configured to move goods and services in and out of the capital city. That's called a a radial system. You notice how like spokes of a wheel, they radiate out of Boston. There was no circumferential or belt road or rail in place because very few people were trying to get from Waltham to Reading or Weimoth to Lexington and whatever circumferential travel they needed, they could use these network of small roads, trolley or rail lines and that more than kept up with demand. And then some darn fool had to go and invent the automobile. And of course, everybody had to have one. Now there's a problem. The roads were now being inundated with cars, trucks, taxis, buses. And
007remember, there's no central artery, no Sumar or Callahan tunnel here in Boston, just those small streets that up until then handled trolleys or horsedrawn carts and buggies. So back in 1909 here in Boston, there was a proposal to build a 100 ft wide elevated road between North and South Stations, but that never got past the talking stage. And by the 1920s, the city was in perpetual gridlock. But despite the horrific gems in Boston, people north of the city who wanted to go to the Cape or people south of the city who wanted to go to New Hampshire or Maine, they chose to drive through the city since there was no circumferential alternative. Now, in an effort to combat the problem, and I'm laughing because I always love the solution that they came up with in
0081925. the old DPW, Department of Public Works, instead of spending millions of dollars on asphalt and and and street signs and lights and paving. Instead, they spent a few hundred bucks on some signs and painted the numbers 1 28 on them, and they simply hammered them into the sides of roads that they decided would represent a circumferential route around Boston about 15 miles outside the city. Now, one question my collaborator on the book, Yanni Cippus, and I never found out is where did the numbers 128 come from? Um, as an engineer, I like to think it has something to do with uh an order of cubes, numbers, but who who the heck knows? Somebody picked 128. And there you go. So, let's say that you lived in Gloucester, Massachusetts in the late 1920s or the
0091930s and you wanted to go to the Southshore, but you wanted to avoid all that traffic in Boston. Well, what we did was we put together kind of a virtual ride as one would take back in that era. From Gloucester, you would have taken Essex Avenue into Essex, following a bunch of local streets through Hamilton, Winnham, and then into Beverly on Essex Street. And Essex Street took you south here into downtown Beverly, where it met Cabbage Street just south of St. Mary's Church, which you can see on the right side of the street. Across the Essex Bridge into Salem, shown here, we hook a right into Boston Street, after which we cross through Peody into neighboring Lynfield. There, the old route 128 used Salem Street to swing westward. This is Salem Street, just as it
010crossed Route One in Lynfield by the old Lynfield Firehouse. Next door to the firehouse over on the right side, take a look. That's E Harvey's and it's a classic example of a business that recognized where the money was going. Originally, they were a meat and produce market, but the owner installed gas pumps to handle the increasing traffic now flowing along the old Route 128 through Wakefield into Stonem via Elm Street. Drivers would then use Route 28, that's Main Street, for a few blocks before turning west onto Montville Avenue, which carried them through Wuburn Center. Then into the four corner section of Wuburn on Lexington Street, right in front of the old Mayflower Furniture, whose sign read 25 years without a sale. and then behind Oor's service station which opened in 1934 and was open until
011just a few years earlier. Now we turn south onto Lexington Street which became Wuberin Street once the road passed into Lexington. Then we go through the heart of downtown Lexington using this threeb block stretch of Mass A before turning south down Waltham Street. Now, since most drivers were using the old 128 as a bypasser on Boston, merchants did not, except for restaurant tours and gas station owners, derive many benefits from the designation. In fact, the crush of traffic and the difficulty locals had in getting to their own town centers kept many away, especially on weekends and holidays. Now the old route 128 snaked its way through the center of Walam down a quarter mile stretch of the heavily congested Main Street after which it turned on to Newton Street where it crossed the Charles River
012on this 19th century Stone Arch bridge. Note the gas station across the bridge. Now old route 128 continues with the turn onto High Street after which we enter Newton through Newton into dem denim needed excuse me. We use a number of local streets before we reach the Highland Avenue interchange. One of the first grade separated limited access interchanges built here in the state. Constructed in 1931, it accommodated one of the many tweaks the old DPW made as they tried to squeeze more and more traffic around 128. Now underneath the underpass, we go on Greenale Avenue, which took over circumferential duties into Denim. Greenale crosses High Street, also root known as Route 109, sometime in the late 1920s in this picture. And for the next two miles, Route 128 meanders into Westwood, then returns back to
013Denim before dropping south again into Westwood, and then enters neighboring Canton. Once it crossed into Canton, old 128 turns onto Blue Hill River Road, which as it crosses eastward through the Blue Hill Reservation, skirts the borders of Milton, Quinsey, and Randolph. And here, where Blue Hill River Road intersects with Route 28, is one of the country's first franchised Howard Johnson's. And you can see Route 128 over on the side of the old Hojo's Blue Hill River Road continues to carry old 128 into Brainree and then a number of local roads carry it to Weimoth. We're looking east along Colombian Street in May of 1947 from a point near the Brainree border. Note another gas station once through Weaimoth. We use another collection of small streets to get to Hangingham. After which we finally end our
014journey in hull. I mean, I'm exhausted. I don't know about you. Look, this ad hoc circumferential route we drove actually worked pretty well for a while. This diagram, it's pretty clever, shows the volume of traffic flow on major roads in the Boston metropolitan area in 1927, including sections of the old ad hoc 128. Thinner the line, the less traffic. The thicker the line, the more traffic. And as we can see, most of our traffic is in and out radially into Boston, but circumferentially those smaller roads and streets were more than capable of handling the traffic. But then something happened in the 1930s. Despite the Great Depression, the bypass began to cause more headaches than it was solving. The downtowns of Wuburn, Lexington, and Waltham, as I've discussed, they were being so badly inundated with traffic,
015even more so on weekends and holidays. And Boston, traffic was getting even worse between North and South Shores. It was a lose-lose situation. And then in 1934, a guy named William Callahan was appointed the commissioner of the Department of Public Works. And he brought to the table a proposal, an idea for a sixlane highway to be built in a semicircle about 15 miles from Boston. Now critics immediately in and out of the government jumped on this proposal as a road to nowhere and they derided the plan as a boondoggle and a make works project for the depression. Their skepticism was in part based on a study performed by Robert Whitten. He was a nationally recognized pioneer in the field of transportation planning. In 1930, Mr. Whitten produced this map which shows the projected flow of
016traffic according to him in 1965 which was then 35 years in the future. Again the thin lines all the lines show volume of traffic. Thin lines not a lot of traffic. Look what he's projecting on 128 or where 128 would be today. He's figuring 10 maybe 20,000 vehicles a day. He still saw most of the need in our region as being radial in and out of Boston. So with estimates for traffic low in the Great Depression at its height, William Callahan had quite a battle to get funding for his highway. And when he succeeded, it was only enough to build that small portion north of the city, and it would only be four lanes wide. But Callahan believed, he was utterly convinced that traffic estimates were far too low. And he designed into Route 128,
017something you don't see very often on a highway, sidewalks, which were planned for either side of the road. That would give him the extra space he needed when he knew they would want to expand the highway. So now we can start building. Now I'll tell you the story. This is one of the fun things about doing research on books like this. I I met a gentleman named Warren Falls. He lives still lives in the same home where he grew up in Lynfield. Back in 1936, Warren had just graduated from Northeastern University, had a degree in electrical engineering, but it's the depression. Didn't have a lot of job opportunities. So he worked overnight at a switchboard at Lynn Hospital. So sleeping during the day so he could work at night. Warren had trouble getting to getting
018to bed because just down the block from him, the Route 128 and Route One overpass had begun construction. So not able to sleep, he took out his family's camera, walked down the block, and snapped photographs like this one. on October 25th, 1936, showing us the forms and center span columns for the first overpass, Route 1 over Route 128. About a month later, Warren still having trouble sleeping, took out his camera and took this picture from the other direction, showing the Route One overpass. You can see the central peers have been poured and they're curing under layers of blankets that keep the wet concrete from freezing in the winter cold. By the way, if you look closely on the other side of Route 12 of Route One, we see a sign for the old Santo Lake
019Inn, then a popular restaurant and dance hall. Here is the almost completed Route One overpass. Uh you will note the sidewalks on the side of the road. It's a gorgeous art deco design. And it should be noted that Callahan uh deliberately had the various overpasses made in the style of the days and also made distinctive from each other because this is was the style of public work works projects back then. Any of you who've driven the Merit Parkway in Connecticut, at least on the portion closest to New York City, experienced the same thing. Those overpasses have all been individually designed. The initial stretch of Route 128. There's another gorgeous art deco overpass. Um, this is the sleek bridge that carried 128 over Walnut Street in Lynfield. Each overpass again unique to its intersection. Another three-mile
020stretch of the highway constructed in Danvers in 1941 just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Now, that brought all highway construction pretty much to an end, including that of Route 128. This, by the way, is the Summer Street overpass in Lynfield. Now, after the war, automobile ownership skyrocketed and more and more people began moving out into the suburbs surrounding Boston. It was a massive migration with veterans taking advantage of the GI Bill, and highway construction became an easier cell. One of the first post-war projects was this short portion of 128 in Beverly, shown in yellow. But because highway funds were so still so limited, only about a 3/4 mile stretch of the road could be built at first. This section would cut through the triangle formed by Dodge, Cabat, and Conan Streets. Here
021in the winter of 1945, looking north, we see behind the dump truck the green houses of the old Cwells farm. To build Route 128, the topology of many towns had to be altered. Here in Beverly, thousands of yards of gravel and dirt had to be trucked into the area to raise the grade of 128 so it could vault over cabin and Dodge streets. Many homes were moved to make way for 128. Here in Beverly, we have this fantastic photograph capturing the moment where both the home and barn belonging to one Harry Woodbury were being moved several hundred feet down Cabbat Street and is actually crossing the front lawn of his neighbor, Mr. Lewis Sims, who was at 620 Cabbat Street. Isn't that I I that's just a fantastic picture. Now, William Callahan, who had left
022to um uh join the service during the war, was reappointed to his old post of commissioner of the DPW by Paul De, governor, in 1949. and he made the completion of the new Route 128 and the building of that elevated central artery in downtown Boston his top priorities under a new highway program. But it was going to be pretty expensive. Get ready. Was going to cost a whole $200 million. I'm pausing for laughter. Now as planning for route 128 from peed to Walam was begun, more money was allocated for the construction of route 128 through to Gloucester. And here in early April of 1950, we see the completed peers of the A Pat Andrew bridge in Gloucester standing ready to receive the steel bridge structure. Here we see workers easing one of the main girdters
023of the approaches to the bridge in place in April of 50. It's interesting to note in the days before field welding of structural steel became widespread, these girdters had to be fastened to other structural elements of the bridge with hundreds of rivets. Each one had to be heated red hot in the field. But the practice of fuel welding had proliferated wildly w rapidly here in the northeast after the close of the second world war as thousands of skilled welders from our wartime ship building industry shifted to jobs in the civilian construction industry. Here's the completed bridge carrying 128 traffic over the Anisworm River Bridge. The last eight mile stretch of Route 128, the so-called missing link in Manchester between Beverly and Gloucester, began in 1952. Here we can see alignment has been cleared of trees
024and brush and excavation is proceeding to expose rocky ledge that needed to be blasted away to make way for the highway through the n rough northshore terrain. In fact, the assistant DPW commissioner called it the toughest piece of road construction ever undertaken in eastern Massachusetts. That of course was way before the big dig. Construction of the 22mm stretch of 128 from the Lynfield Wakefield border down to the Welssley Needm border was begun simultaneously at several places along the highway between the spring of 1950 and the summer of 1951. Here in Reading from where I'm speaking, we're looking northwest across Main Street or Route 28. Now, Route 128 would in a few years take Eleanor and Stan Brown's farm stand in the foreground and their gas station, but the England family home that's up the street,
025you can see it in the distance, it was saved temporarily by demolishing the barn behind it and moving the house into where the barn used to stand. Reading would even bring us build a short spur off of South Street named England Road to provide access to the house. The house is no longer there, but England Road still exists. Looking north from Main Street here in Reading towards the construction of the interchange with 128. This is near the site of the old Browns Farm stand. According to Jack Bowden, Reading's former police chief, construction crews, at the end of the day, they would just leave dynamite in the holes for their blasting overnight, and they would hire people like Jack to watch it. And he recalls spending many cold nights sitting on top of the ledge to
026make sure that kids didn't get to the dynamite. Moving further south, we can see the new highway taking shape in the vicinity of Washington Street in Wuburn. Today, one of the most heavily developed areas around the highway. We're looking west in 1950 and we can see the concrete peers and abupments of the Washington Street overpass being formed in the foreground while debris from a recent blasting job are being cleared in the background. From Wuburn Street, the new highway swung southwest through Burlington, where it cut between the Crawford family farmhouse and the farm itself, requiring the family to take instead of being able to walk out their front door and down into their fields, instead they now had to take a onemile long drive to access their fields, which were now across Route 128. Our top
027view looks north on Wind Street in Burlington in late 1949. The Crawford Farm would be on our right in this view. Below is an identical view taken less than two years later showing the new bridge for Route 128. Now it's June of 1951. We can see asphalt being laid in Burlington near the Cambridge Street interchange. Um, the DPW, they had a lot of problems with drivers, bicyclists, even mothers with baby carriages who took the liberty of test driving the nearly completed highway in the weeks before it opened to traffic in Waltham at Trapella Road. The highway passed under this unusual concrete hunch beam bridge. Again, taking a nod from the designers of the Merit Parkway, you can see how the different overpasses were deliberately and at no small cost varied along the 22-mile stretch of
028the new highway. Here in the vicinity of the future Route 20 interchange in Waltham, we see a steam pile driver at work in October of 1950. In areas along the new highways alignment where the soil was wet or of poor bearing capacity, clusters of deep piles had to be driven in the ground in order to support bridge abutments and peers. On August 23rd, 1951, the 22mm long stretch of Route 128 opened with a series of ribbon cutting ceremonies in each town through which the highway passed. In Wuburn, fireman Robert Perry, would take movies of the event, which includes Governor De, that's the large man in the brown blue suit, receiving a gift of a briefcase made of Wuburn leather, by the town's mayor, Francis Murray, who by the way also happened to o own one
029of the larger leather shops in Wuburn. Perryi took his camera and took this following movie of Route 128 after Governor De got in his limousine and drove north on 128 to the next ribbon cutting ceremony. And I'm going to see if we can get that movie Whoops. to operate. [Music] And give me just a second. Mina can vouch that we had this working earlier. And I think you just have to press the play button, right? I should. Yes. But there I can't see the play button. Oh, darn it. So, let me see if I can do it. So, I'm just going to move the move forward. You can see As he turned his camera behind Dever's limousine, he caught the thousands of people who were following the governor's limousine up Route 128. And so, ladies
030and gentlemen, I am pleased to show you the very first traffic jam on Route 128. Okay, that actually worked. That is engineering ingenuity right at work. Thank you so much. All right. Well, we've completed the northern portion of Route 128. Now, we can start building the southern portion, and that began in 1953. What's interesting and what I'm sure you will notice is how much of the new highway was built near the alignment of the old ad hoc 128. Because here in the southwest portion of the metro area, which was less developed, the roads were more direct and they the ad hoc 128 actually followed the alignment of where the new highway was going to be. And you're going to see that shortly. It's 1954 in this view showing the reconstruction of the Highland Avenue overpass.
031Again, it was one of the first bridges to be constructed over the old 128. But you can see that they had to tear that overpass down and rebuild it to accommodate the wider highway that was going to need to go under it. Now we seeing earthwork along the old 128 in denim in the late winter of 1955. If you look behind our that uh uh machine, you'll see a Gulf gas station and that road is the old 128 again coming pretty close to the alignment of the new highway. By the way, it's kind of funny. DPW Commissioner Callahan, he hated the gas stations and the restaurants and all the facilities along the roadsides. Um he said, quote, "These stands have been springing up like weeds and ruin the new road when in fact uh they
032were an example of why the nude road was going to be such a success." Here in July of 1955, we see drilling crews boring holes in granite ledge here in Denim prior to blasting to make way for a cloverleaf of ramps that would serve Route 109. And in the background, you see the trucks and the cars driving along the ad hoc 128 with the interchange ramps still being blasted out of the ledge alongside the roadway. a short stretch of the future northbound barrel of the new highway was a two-way traffic highway and retained a signalized interchange here in July of 1955. Uh there is still only one remaining signal technically on Route 128 and we'll save that for the very end of our talk. Hey, the 1950s were a very good time to be in
033the road building business here in Massachusetts as nearly half a billion state dollars were spent on highway construction in the first half of the decade alone. So, remember that $200 million estimate we got from Callahan? No, a lot more than that. This is a really great picture because it shows us the difference between what was being built, what had been built in the northern portion of the highway and what was now going to be built for the second half of the highway and through the 1960s. Over on the right side is the original overpass between the old 128 and Route One. Notice the art deco styling of the concrete. Now look at the left side. That's going to be for the new northbound barrel of the new Route 128. And look how well it's not
034very artistic. It's very utilitarian. And that is what became mandated by the national federal government, especially after the signing by Eisenhower in 1956 of the National Highway Act, to standardize the overpasses as a way to ensure that throughout the country, the heights and the strength of these bridges would be enough. Because for Eisenhower, it was important that tanks be able to move from one part of the country to the other. He learned a lot when he was stationed in Germany before the war. Here in Canton, near the current location of the interchange with I95, we see a thick layer of asphalt laid over a finely graded bed of gravel. Now, I95 was constructed in the late 1960s and was originally intended to go all the way into Boston, but when political opposition blocked those plans
035and forced I95 from the south to terminate at Route 128, Route 128 inherited the I95 designation from Canton to Peody, where I 95 again would split off and go north. It's kind of like what they did in the 20s. Remember, instead of spending all those millions of dollars on asphalt and concrete and barriers and just put some signs in the ground. Well, in the 1960s, because we weren't going to build a highway north into and through the city of Boston, the state got the area, the section of 128 between I 95 south in Canton and I 95 north in Peody to be designated I95. And that I designation, that interstate designation, meant that the highway was now qualified for federal funds for expansion, for lighting, and for maintenance. Once again, our New England thriftiness um
036saved us more than a few million dollars. It also explains why for many years if you were driving south on 128, you would pass the I95 highway uh connection down to Providence and all of a sudden you would find yourself on I 93 north without barely having to turn your steering wheel. So, as we conclude our trip south, we have this annotated view by uh produced by the DPW, which shows the narrow winding old route 128. See that way over on the right side and the new uh old the new Route 128 and the new interchange with the future Route 24. Remember, there's that old 128. That's Blue Hill Blue Hill uh River Road. And you can see it kind of very close to the alignment of the new highway. Well, this new highway was
037a huge success. That first day that the northern portion opened in 1951, 50,000 cars jammed the highway. three times the estimates of that uh so-called transportation expert back in the 1930. And the traffic just kept building. So much so that before the southern portion of 128 was even completed, stretches of the northern portion were already being widened from two to three lanes. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is really what the Route 128 story is all about. You see, nobody, not the most ardent developer, a highway proponent or transportation expert, nobody predicted the incredible growth that was to occur around the new highway. Yet, in retrospect, sitting here nice and comfortable in our Monday morning quarterback chair, the amazing confluence of factors that combined to create a breeding ground for growth now seem very clear. First,
038of course, the highway had to get built. Now, Commissioner Callahan decided to bypass town centers. It was a way to lower resistance to his plan, but it also meant that land near the then remote highway was selling for as low as 5 cents a square foot. So, there's lots of room to build and do so inexpensively. Meanwhile, here at MIT, which had played a major role in the development of radar and the atomic bomb during the Second World War, continued its role in the 1950s as a heavily funded research arm of the government at places like the famous building 20 shown here, which by the way, where Yanni's father, my collaborator, his father was a physicist who worked here at building 20. Some of the school's students, encouraged by copious amounts of research dollars, which,
039no pun intended, would skyrocket with the launch of Sputnik, which initiated our space race with the Russians, started their own companies and hired many of their professors as consultants, which seems to me a great way to get an A. Well, it also happened at the same time that New England's textile industry was collapsing and Waltham's watch companies were closing, which left a pool of workers who had the very skills needed for electronics, assembly, and other precision work. But save for pockets of land in Kendall Square near MIT, there was not a lot of room in Cambridge for old businesses to expand or new ones to build. and prospect to cross the Charles River here in Boston were no better. Thanks to a combination of neglect, incompetence, and malfeasants, Massachusetts capital was not a very good
040place to think about citing a business. In fact, things were so bad that a US News and World Report would later describe the city as quote dying on the vine. So now all the pieces are in place around the highway for something remarkable to happen. A desperate need for places to site new businesses, the engineering talent to design the products, the skilled workers to build them, lots of money from both public and private sources, and cheap land and plenty of it around 128 like that shown here in the Wakefield and Lynfield area. All of these could be considered fuel for growth. But someone someone still needed to light the match for that growth to happen. And that someone was a man named Gerald Blakeley. In 1948, Gerald Blakeley was several months into a new job
041with the development firm of Kat and Forbes. Now, Blakeley had been studying the state's master highway plan, which I've reproduced here. It included six spokes of a wheel. That wheel being Route 128, and the spokes being six highways that were supposed to feed into the hub, which was going to be an eight lane elevated highway known as the inner belt. Now, that urban renewal disaster, which would have displaced 20,000 people, was never built. Neither was I 95 northwest, excuse me, northeast of the city. The route to um extension was never completed. And I 95 southwest of the city, as we've seen, was never built either. But we didn't know that in 1948. We still thought all of these pieces were going to be built. So, as Blakeley tells the story, he woke one night with
042a start and after slipping into the bathroom so he wouldn't wake his wife. He began scribbling scribbling furiously on several pages of notes on a legal pad. When he was done, Blakeley had conceived of a master plan for development near Route 128. His idea, simply put, was to recreate the college campus environment of those engineers we talked about by providing copious amounts of green lawns and trees and other landscaping. And by placing parking lots behind these well-designed low-rise buildings, he would not only provide a campus-like atmosphere, but make it easier for builders to obtain zoning changes and permits from towns around the road. This 1973 aerial shows us in the foreground the GT, the old GTE plant just off Taton Pond Road in Waltham. This site which was developed by Capid Kapid and forms has
043that campus style feel. Notice it the front of the building it's all green. It looks like a campus quad. And look further back closer to the highway and you see the old style industrial park with quanet huts and concrete and not a lot of green space. Blakeley's plan worked and boy did it ever. Development friendly zoning laws in Waltham led to companies like GTE and Canada Dry and Thermo Electron to site their offices and plants. Wilmington welcomed defense contractor Avco. This sign advertises the availability of sites in the Peabody Industrial Center, another CCNF project near the current I95 interchange. The electronics firm Hitron was vigorously pursued by Beverly, which was helped in their efforts by the Department of Public Works, which built a bridge over 128 at Endicott Road to help seal the deal. This
044northerly view was taken in the spring of 1953, showing 128 as it passes over the Waters River, which was actually relocated as part of the highways construction. Middle Sex County did the same here in Wuburn, building an access row that helped secure a Sylvania electronics plant. Down in Dham, where 128 intersects with Route 1 and Route 95, the town zoned for several large industrial parks. And this was the future home of the US Rubber Company. Okay, now for some numbers. In 1955, there were 53 commercial enterprises located around 128. In just four years, that number quadrupled to 226. And by 1967, there were over 729 commercial buildings around the highway, employing over 66,000 figure people. And that figure doesn't even take into account governmentr run offices and facilities. That is an amazing amount of growth
045in a very short period of time. So what would all those workers do after work? Why they get into their cars and spend their money? Perhaps going to one of the mammoth shopping malls that had been approved in Peodyy, Burlington, and Brainree. Here's the Northshore Mall in Peody in its early incarnation. By the 1950s, with New England's agricultural industry long in decline, developers found many farm owners eager to sell their properties at inflated prices that proximity to the new highway commanded. And big malls weren't the only result of growth. All over the region, entrepreneurs would open beauty parlors, restaurants, motel, furniture stores, movie houses, and lots of other small businesses in strip malls that dotted the landscape. Here in Wakefield, one visionary attempted to create New England's own version of Disneyland with the construction of
046the $4 million Pleasure Island Amusement Park located right off of Route 128. It was the first of several attempts to imitate the successful Disneyland in California by using a theme park concept and it opened in 1959. But financial problems and a little thing called winter dog the park from the very beginning and by 1969 it had closed and the property is now well what is it? It's an industrial park of course. Meanwhile, citizens in towns like Burlington saw development along the road as, and this is a quote from a local official, a gold mine. And they altered their zoning laws to encourage commercial, business, and retail developments, which just a few years ago accounted for 60% of Burlington's town tax income. That's money that Burlington was happy to take for schools, safety services, and other
047necessities. And for decades, it seemed like everybody was jumping on the Route 128 bandwagon. Well, not everybody. In the late 1940s, the people of Lexington were almost unified in their support for the proposed new circumferential highway. They were getting tired of people jamming that center of their town every damn day, worse on the weekends and holidays with the old ad hoc 128. So just like every other town along the highway, Lexington's population increased dramatically after the highway was open. In 1959, just eight years after the opening of the new Route 128, when presented with the opportunity to site a filings department store at the intersection of Routes 2 and 128, the town voted down the project. And while some research facilities were approved, larger firms were prevented from building in Lexington, thanks to people like
048activist Jacqueline Brooks Davidson, who once called Gerald Blakeley's firm Cabbat, Cabbat, and Grabbit. And throughout the 1950s,60s, and 70s and onward, Lexington, using historic districts and zoning laws, continued to reject smaller lot sizes for their new houses, even at the cost of increasing individual homeowners tax burden. And as I've mentioned, the stunning prosperity that Gerald Blakeley's new fangled industrial parks put a lot more cars on the road. And despite numerous widening projects over the years, including the one that just a few years ago was finally finished between Needam and Denim, there's really no option for those folks working around Route 128, but to use their cars because there's no mass transit alternatives. But let's not be so quick to blame either Callahan or Blakeley for the traffic. Remember, Callahan wanted wider roads from the beginning
049and even had to use the subtrafuge of a sidewalk to get a right of way for six lanes up north. Callahan also wanted a train to run down the median strip of Route 128, but that feature was cut when the government wouldn't pay for the extra land required. Finally, both Callahan and Blakeley expected that the full 1948 master highway plan would be built as proposed, including the god-awful inner beltway, as well as the Southwest, Northwest, and Northeast Expressways, which would carry traffic radially in and out of Boston to Route 128, excuse me. But for many reasons, most having to do with community activism and environmental concerns. Now, only 93, the Mass Turnpike route uh and the Southeast Expressway were ever built, meaning those roadways and the central artery, both elevated and depressed, need to take
050up the slack for the unbuilt pieces. So, we built it and they came. You knew at some point I was going to have to say that. We've talked about how back in the 1950s, the northern section of Route 128 was being widened even as the southern portion was being built. And as a result, more traffic flowed along the highway. So interchanges such as the Route 1, Route 128 interchange would need to be wider and have longer ramps. So, as I prepare to wrap things up, I've got this remarkable photograph which shows several things to help bring our story full circle. First of all, running alongside the red arrow is the uh original ad hoc Route 128 running along Salem Street here in Lynfield. Circled in yellow is the house on Monroe Street in which Warren
051Falls, our sleepless Northeast graduate, tried to sleep but couldn't and took those photos of the Route One overpass circled in blue, which we can see is once again being upgraded by all those extra cars, trucks, and vehicles that now number up to a quarter of a million a day. And that's even with the uh with the pandemic. Ironically, many towns along Route 128 still experience gridlock, the very thing the highway was built to eliminate as frustrated drivers turn off the overcrowded highway onto many of the same two-lane streets that had once been designated as the old circumferential route. Proposed interchange improvements have been met with great resistance by communities that would see have seen hundreds dozens, excuse me, of homes and businesses taken. This was the 2002 proposal for the I93 Route 128 interchange. It
052would have taken 77 homes and carved out large chunks of several businesses and it was quickly pulled off the table. It took a few years. a preferred alternative was the outcome from the task force that was convened as a result of that opposition. Uh when contacted the mass BT DPW representative said said to me quote the project is dormant at this time and not likely to move forward for the foreseeable future. So unfortunately one of the worst interchanges in the country will remain it remain as such for quite a long time once heretical concepts such as smart growth as evidenced by projects in Somerville, Westwood and other places may or may not guide the future of 128. A lot of work from home motivated mostly by the pandemic is certainly helping the issue, but there's
053still sprawl, pollution, and time loss behind the wheel as we wait to see what solutions uh can be uh created for this highway. In the meantime, if you have to drive Route 128, I suggest buying some books on tape because traffic won't be getting easier anytime soon. Uh, this book, which again came out in 2003, would not make for a very good book on tape, but it is filled with other two over 200 images, many of which have never been published uh before. So folks, I I I can't thank you enough for uh spending part of your afternoon with me here on this talk. I'm going to turn things back over to uh Mina and she's going to um I'm going to turn my video back on and let's uh see what sort of questions
054and comments we have. And again, thank you all very much and thank you uh Mina for having me today. Absolutely. That was fascinating and we have lots of questions here. Great. Um, David, do you want to stop your screen share and then the two of us I we can I will do that. Hold on a second. I think I can do this. Oh, perfect. Can I do it? You did it. Hooray for that engineering degree. Yay. I love it. Um, we Okay, so we're get lots of questions. Um, Diane says her father worked father-in-law worked as a surveyor on the 128 project. When he was surveying in Waltham through an area that was previously a pig farm, he came across big piles of silverware evidently mixed in with garbage destined for the pig farm that
055restaurants threw out. Do you have any information on where on that stretch of 128 the pig farm was located? Okay, you know how hard it is to make me speechless, but but that's a great I I do not know. I do not I've not heard that's the only pig farm I'm aware of is there was actually a not too not just over the hill in Wuburn there was a a a pig rendering facility which when I first moved here to reading 35 years ago you could smell on warm days even though they had topped it off with uh with Phil. So, I I I can only imagine that um it's still kind of smelt in that area on warm. I'm going to have to look that up, but thank you for telling me about that.
056That's great. Um so, I just want to tell everybody that I'm taking questions from the Q&A. So, if you are putting questions in the chat, just copy and paste them into the Q&A because it's hard for me to follow all of the chat. And um we're not unmuting people. We are in a webinar. So, just please put your questions right into the Q&A and I will get to them. Um, okay. So, Christopher says, "Do routes 27 and 129 have similar history?" I note that those two together constitute constitute a surface circumferential route between 128 and 495. No, it was never designated as such. Um, you should it and a quick story. Thank you for mentioning 495. Uh my father-in-law was a bank examiner for the state for many many years and he remembers in the
057late60s when 495 was built. Uh I guess highway designers again that's an I I 495. So lots of federal money might as well take it. And they built that extra uh uh circumferential road. He remembers when was a desert. There was almost nobody on it. Now, of course, there are just as many traffic reports about jams and and and incidents on that highway as there are used to be on Route 128. Uh so, another example of if you build it, they will come. That that just never gets old. No. Um Pat asks, "Are there are any of the original structures still standing?" I don't think so because as they widened, and that's a darn darn shame. Um unlike the Merit Parkway, which I think is still only two lanes for most of its uh most
058of the length leading up to Meridian. It's that, you know, as they widen the road, they just took those beautiful deco structures there. I I have to think about that. There may be remnants of one or two existing, but I I I can't be sure about that. Um, let me think. Okay. How long would it take to drive the whole length of the old 128? I guess I have to ask um Barry if he means in an old car or a current sports car. And I guess we'd have to uh I mean it would it would take you one if you tried to do it on a weekend especially during the summer uh it could take you hours but again you people had no choice back then you know or they could go through the
059city but uh that didn't seem to be a very uh pleasant alternative. Yeah. So I don't really know because I never I'm I'm not old enough to have done that. Okay. Well, do research for us, right? Yeah, I'll go back in that time machine. Oh, well, that's a great question. That's a I I I have to do some research. I I don't know if anyone ever recorded that. Okay. Um Stanley wants to know it was something you said in your t in your u presentation. He said that Eisenhower saw the Ottabons after the war. No, he saw him before the war. Before the war. Yeah, he was there in the uh 20s. Okay. And he was he was extremely impressed. And he also he recognized what the value of being able to transport heavy, you
060know, things like tanks from one city to another. Interesting. Interesting that that was his sort of it it was it was and he's Yeah, he even said so many times. Um, Jeanie wants to know, "Why did they start in the north versus the south when building 128?" Because uh the north had was more populated and needed the um needed the the to get rid of get people off the that ad hoc uh roadway. Again, as we saw on the southwest part of the state, uh it was a lot less developed uh especially before the war. Um, we're getting some really interesting comments in the chat and I want to let you know that I will share the chat with David afterwards so he can also read all of these interesting comments especially about the pig
061farm. I'm getting a kick out of this. Yeah. Yeah. I'm seeing a I'm seeing a few people mentioning it. That's Yeah. Just Anyways, Earl asks, "Is there any truth to the story of construction workers finding many rattlesnakes digging for 128 near the Blue Hills? Another Hold on. I'm writing that down. That's another new one. Nope. I don't know. I've not heard that story. Wow, you guys are flumxing him. It's Yeah. Yeah. I will send that question to you if you want to respond to him later. Yeah. Thanks. Um Ronald says, "Why did the new 128 end at Brain Tree instead of continuing to hull like the old 128?" Because it was connecting to the Route Three. Okay. Wow. Interesting. Just like the just like the 128 north, it doesn't go all the way to um
062actually go into Gloucester or up to the to the shore. It stops um which by the way, that's where our last signalized interchange is at the very very end of 128. Oh, somebody did ask somewhere, where's that last light on 128? It's up in It's up in Gloucester. Yeah. Oh, cool. Um, Beatrice asks, "Why did they change the merge right on ramps to be turned left with a stoplight before accessing the onramp?" I I I don't know. Why did they change the merge right on the ramps to turn to be turned left with a stoplight before accessing the on ramp? I'm not sure what that um I I if if if I get the question correctly um uh engineers or traffic engineers um they have a a way of measuring volumes of traffic. Uh they
063they label intersections and interchanges and merges with the numbers one through five. Um, so when you get a five or a four, uh, they have to figure out how to make that number higher. And those tra those literally a traffic light at a at a entrance ramp is just meant to psy to prevent cars too many cars from trying to merge onto the highway at the same time. So by metering it out, it also has a psychological effect for those people who are thinking about getting on the highway and they know, oh god, four o'clock on a rush hour to try to get on the highway. I'm standing in line. I'll just stay on the local streets. And it has a a dual effect of metering the number of cars that enter the highway and
064also kind of gets people off the highway, even thinking about getting on the highway. I like it. Um, Kathleen says, "How many vehicles was the original 128 designed to hold? Um, what has been done in the past decade to accommodate the increase in number of trucks and vehicles that use it to get to and from their offices?" I mean, you know, 128's crazy, of course, at any time of the day. So, I'm kind of interested in that, too. Well, again, they they built the original highway thinking uh 10 to 20,000 cars, but the capacity uh at full was said to be around 50, but they quickly ran out of capacity and that's when they started expanding the highway. The problem is, and I have to go back to that field of dreams quote because uh
065the when I spent a lot of time with engineers and the traffic guys at the big dig and one of the ones said to me, "Look, you could open up a 32 lane highway that goes into the city on a Monday and it'll be beautiful that first day, but that night everyone's going to call their friends, you won't believe how easy it is to get into Boston now." And on Tuesday, it's going to be jammed. So, there has to be more than just building more roads. And look, we're we're we're in we're in a crisis with the climate. There's uh so there's environmental issues. We don't want to put more people in their cars. We want to try to get them into mass transit. We want to get more work from home. We want to
066find ways to create hubs of activity. Uh, you know, when not everybody, you know, so that I have to get in my car to get to the supermarket, but in these new places like the like Westwood and down in Somerville, people can walk to their supermarket. they can they don't have to get in their cars to do you know to go shopping to enjoy things in their neighborhood. Uh so again they call that smart growth and it's about doing a transportation system that isn't wholly dependent. Not saying don't get in your cars of course there's lots of reasons to get in your cars and one should be able to do that but not for everything that you do and that's what smart growth is about. Excellent. Um Tim says, "How controversial and difficult was land
067takingaking?" Um well, it's the old it's the old joke, knock-k knockock. I'm from the government. I'm here to help. Here's a check. Uh a lot of people uh fought. Some people won. Uh some people got their homes moved uh and then found that the place where the home was moved was not that far from the highway. So they probably should have taken the check. Um so you know u it was it was not completely smooth. Uh there are lots of stories about people who tried to fight but you know the the laws around eminent domain for public services they they were able to uh they were able to get the homes. So basically you you took the check and then you find somebody else someplace else to live. It sounds pretty draconian and a little
068totalitarian, but you know what? Uh there that's that's just the way things were. Uh but again where that highway was cited there were home takings to be sure. But again, Callahan tried to put this highway as far away from town centers and into as le little populated areas as he could for that very reason to reduce that amount of friction with local uh towns and entities and to try to make the highway as as seamlessly integrated with the area as possible. So yes, it did happen but uh uh not as often as uh as had feared. Well, that's good. Martin asks, "Do we know the names of the contractors who built the road?" Wow. I'd have to ask um I have to ask Yanni to dig into his files. I mean, I we see in
069some of the pictures we see some of the names, but I don't have them off the top of my head. Sorry. Um let's see. Some people are asking about the traffic light, which as you had mentioned is up in Glouster. Actually, a lot of people are asking about that. Yeah. Um it's a fun trivia question, isn't it? A little highway trivia. It is. And now every like 150 people know it. Um, Rocco says, "Is there a plan to widen 128?" Oh god, I hope not. No, we got to fix these interchanges like the one that's right down the street from me. Oh, is there a problem with it? Well, that's the 12893 interchange. Oh, yes. Okay. Which is a classic cloverleaf. And you all know what a cloverleaf interchange looks like. And clover leaves were
070beautiful and they could be landscaped and they made a lot of sense when people drove uh Model T's and Model A's and they went 30 maybe 40 miles an hour and there weren't that many cars on the road. But when you have the volume of tens of thousands of cars coming up 93 and they're trying to merge on to 128 where there's tens of thousands more cars. Uh well, you know, just turn on BZ right now and start listening to the traffic reports. And where's one of the trouble spots? It's always going to be the 93128 interchange. Yeah, I've always had trouble there, too. Yeah. Um, of course, as everybody does. Uh Paul says, "For some years, there was a crossroad with a traffic light in Peody. Any idea why it was left there on
071128 when it was built?" trying to I don't know which crossroad there's I don't know the crossroad there's no traffic light on 128 until you get all the way up to Gloucester but I don't know which interchange was having uh text that to uh Mina if you would please. Sure. Um, Joseph says, "What resources would you suggest for research on the history of the land taken for 128?" There's more to the question which I can get to. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I I'm sure there are there are some scholarly papers um over at MIT where um Fred Salvuchi, I think he he's he he I know he was he was a teacher there for many years. Um the departments of urban development would certainly have that sort of those sorts of resources. I I would just
072frankly I would Google it and see what what shows up. Yeah. His specific question is about roads or trails. Um it's from the photos uh that there were ridges and rock formations that were cut for the road and you know is there are there where we can we find details for that preconstruction condition? H that's I that would perhaps be in the mass what is now the mass highway department archives. So I would get a hold of Mass Highway. Excellent. Ask them. Um Katherine asks, "The original St. Mary of the Annunciation in Danvers was demolished for Route 128. Do you know anything about this?" No, ma'am, I don't. Sorry. Okay. I love it. You like stuffing me, don't you? Mean you're liking this, aren't you? I can't because the last time I had you, you
073had answers for everything. It's a big road. It's a long road. It's right. Uh, let me see. I'm trying to find a question from somebody who hasn't had one yet. Um, there's a lot of comments about the pig farm. Um, what makes what makes the road so difficult seems to be all of the onoff ramps. I think that has something to do with that question you answered recently. Yeah. Um, if they built a train or trolley in the middle lane of 128, what was the plan for how would people have gotten there to their to their ultimate destinations in office parks or towns? Um, shuttle buses, trolleys, um, you know, like for example down in Westwood at the 128 train station, you know, there you would have or you could have caught the Riverside Green
074Line. Um there were they would have just created the connections based off of where those stations were located which probably would have been at the cross streets. Right. Well actually I was as a followup my question is how would people even get to the middle of lane of 128 because it would be so dangerous. overpasses. It's that's you know again you've got the high you've got an overpass let's say for route 20 in in uh in Waltham just you know that's and by the way when you build those train stations you then are incentivizing developers to build so close by that people could just get off the train and walk right to their offices. Mhm. I mean, the development would it still would have been developed and I don't know what Mr. Blakeley would have
075come up with as an adjunct to his plan, but it would have been slightly different had we that rail system. Um, is there a is there a plan at some point Diane asks for a deck adding? Oh god, I hope not. I hope not. Oh my god, how awful. Oh yeah. Uh, no. No more cars. Yeah, I agree. Um, when did the prison or jail inside within 128 near Dam go in? I don't know. But boy, if there's any incentive for a prisoner not to try to escape, it's not to try to cross Route 128. Yeah, that could be dangerous. Um, where can we find detailed maps showing the original 128? Um well I we have I don't have actually don't have a copy of book in my hand but there is there are some
076maps we have in uh in the book but again I would go to the Mass Highway Department website. There are funny there's a there's a fellow who works at a car dealership near here. a fellow named Robert Fehee who is um he's a chronicler of Route 128. And so look up Robert Fehee F ah he ey and 128 if you Google that his name and 128 his website should come up. I'll bet he can answer that question and some of the others that uh great questions by the way that you're all asking. Maybe Robert knows something more about the pig farm which apparently is of great interest to everybody today. I guess I like pigs. They're adorable. Especially the little Vietnamese guys, you know. Well, I was going to make a comment about bacon, but
077I think maybe that's inappropriate. Thank you. We almost got a spit take live on camera. That was Well, I guess we're just having a good old time. Um, Kathleen says, "Going back to the beautifully constructed overpass bridges. Whatever happened to the overpass bridge over Trapello Road in Waltham?" You mentioned that in the late 1950s the Eisenhower administration mandated that the overpass bridges had to be built to accommodate tank movement. Um and so without ornamentation. So when the bridges the bridges concrete had they were updated. What happened to when did they remove all of that ornamentation a as as they were widening the highway? They just that's when they rebuilt the bridges. So each bridge was done at a different time. Mhm. I don't know explicitly when the when the route 20 uh hunch beam bridge.
078Okay. I'm trying to see if there's a question in here. Um nope. I think we're about out of questions that have not been asked before. Wow, that was impressive. That was like a a marathon questioning. Oh, that was great. I love this. Thank you. I thank thank you all for attending and for for giving me some some great questions. And as I said, I will send um David the chat and the Q&A so he can think about these questions that he might not have known the answers to. And um I can send out some information in in my recap maybe, but I will send out the recap with the video link because David was gracious enough to let us record this session. And um as always, David Amazing. Thank you so much for your information.
079Thank you. Thank you everybody. Thank you. And where can we find your book? Well, I assume it's at your library or any of the libraries in the uh in the system. Um uh there's also through Nobleet, you can order the li the book from uh all the libraries in the Noble system. And uh it's also, you know, it's it's out of print, but uh just, you know, go to eBay or or Amazon. I know Amazon I every now and again I've got the little reminder people are selling the book. So I wish I had copies to sell, but I don't. Okay. Well, that's okay. That is true that um most libraries do have copies, so people can put on hold. And I think we have um almost I think we have all of your books,
080so you can um read any of them. Thank you again for this wonderful talk and we hope to have you back again soon. Well, thank you. Hopefully talk about uh if I can do a little advertising commercial plug uh my first published work of fiction which is a novel titled Inseparable which is all about the 1962 Alcatraz escape. It's a fiction based on the actual escape and that has just been recently released by uh publisher DX Varos. And if you go, it's on Amazon, it's on Apple books, it's on all the platforms, you can even order a print copy uh if you go to inseparable AlcatrazN.com. That's inseparable alcatraznvel.com. Thank you. I will put that link in the recap so Oh, great. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. Oh, the applause. Little things popping up
081on the screen. Thumbs up. Thank you. Nowadays, this Oh, look at those. All those happy thumbs. Oh, that's great. I love it. So, everybody Thank you everybody. So engaged and I will see you all again soon. I hope. David, everybody, thank you. Thank you. Oh, look at that. You're all floating around. Bye everybody.