by Earl Swift
[>] AASHO was picky ...: "Adopt Interstate Sign and Numbering Plan," Better Roads.
[>] In March and April of 1955 ...: "The Effect of Letter Width and Spacing on Night Legibility of Highway Signs," Public Roads 29, no. 1 (April 1956). See also Richard Weingroff, "Shields and Signs," at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/50sheild.cfm.
[>] It remained to standardize ...: History interviews; Transportation Research Board, "Pavement Lessons Learned from the AASHO Road Test and Performance of the Interstate Highway System," Transportation Research Circular E-C118 (July 2007); "The AASHO Street and Highway Test—What It Didn't Say," TAC, July 1962; "World's Biggest Road Test Ends," Business Week, December 10, 1960.
[>] Along the way ...: "The AASHO Road Test," a technical Web article at http://training.ce.washington.edu/PGI/Modules/06_structural_design/aasho_road_test.htm.
[>] He'd become well known ...: Frank Tolbert, "Tolbert's Texas," Dallas Morning News, August 10, 1955.
[>] He and Caroline Fuller ...: Herbert Fairbank, "Posthumous Honor for 'Mister Public Roads,'" Retirement Life, December 1958.
[>] They'd traveled a lot ...: MacDonald letter of October 22, 1954, to Pyke Johnson (THM).
[>] Suffering from an undisclosed ailment ...: MacDonald letter of October 21, 1954, to Pyke Johnson (THM).
[>] He'd been similarly upbeat ...: MacDonald letter of April 5, 1957, to Gen. Franklin M. Kreml, director of Northwestern University's Transportation Center (THM).
[>] The condition evidently ...: Fairbank, "Posthumous Honor for 'Mister Public Roads'"; Pyke Johnson, "...and We Here Highly Resolve," American Highways, April 1957; "Tom McDonald," Montezuma Republican, April 11, 1957; and "Thos. MacDonald, U.S. Road Builder, Dies Here Suddenly," Bryan Eagle, August 8, 1957.
[>] He and the casket ...: Alf Johnson letter to AASHO members of April 11, 1957 (FCT); Gibb Gilchrist, April 30, 1957, letter to Caroline Fuller MacDonald (FCT).
[>] The Washington Post wrote ...: Editorial, Washington Post, April 16, 1957.
[>] AASHO's Alf Johnson ...: Johnson letter to AASHO members of April 11, 1957 (FCT).
[>] Fairbank delivered his tribute ...: Richard Weingroff, "The Genie in the Bottle: The Interstate System and Urban Problems," http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/rw00c.cfm. Caroline stayed on in College Station with her sister after the Chief's death. When Jane died, Caroline moved in with the Chief's daughter, Margaret, in the suburbs of Orlando, Florida. In September 1986, she moved into the Florida Living Nursing Center in Apopka. She died there, aged one hundred, on May 1, 1989.
[>] "We have progressed...": "Progress to Date," Better Roads, September 1957.
[>] By the time the Clay Committee...: "Our Tangled Traffic," Science Digest, October 1955.
[>] Cars gobbled vast stores...: Wilfred Owen, "Automotive Transport in the United States," Annals 320 (November 1958).
[>] With the interstates still...: "Our Tangled Traffic," Science Digest, October 1955.
[>] By one estimate...: "Congestion Costs New York City One Billion Yearly," TAC, February 1954.
[>] Another forecast held...: "Our Tangled Traffic," Science Digest, October 1955. Rep. George A. Dondero, chair of the House Committee on Public Works, observed that buggies would be faster in a speech at AASHO's annual meeting, Seattle, November 1954 (FCT).
[>] Born out of wedlock ...: Lewis Mumford's childhood, discovery of Patrick Geddes, widening explorations of New York, and early writings are detailed in his autobiography, Sketches from Life; Miller, Lewis Mumford: A Life; and Wojtowicz, Lewis Mumford and American Modernism.
[>] The turning point ...: "Where the Great City Spread," The New Yorker, March 3, 1956.
MacDonald noted Olmsted's grade-separation scheme years earlier—in a January 24, 1947, speech to the North Carolina Society of Engineers (THM).
[>] The same year ...: 2007–2009 conversations with Robert Wojtowicz.
[>] An architectural detail ...: Mumford, "Bauhaus—Two Restaurants and a Theatre," The New Yorker, December 31, 1938.
[>] A proposed bridge ...: Mumford, "Growing Pains: The New Museum," The New Yorker, June 3, 1939.
[>] A Manhattan milk bar ...: Mumford, "The Dead Past and the Dead Present," The New Yorker, March 23, 1940.
[>] His "Sky Lines" ...: "Form of Forms," Time, April 18, 1938.
[>] He'd been taken, too ...: Mumford, "Westward, Ho!" The New Yorker, February 25, 1939.
[>] By 1947, Mumford was writing ...: Wojtowicz, Lewis Mumford and American Modernism.
[>] His magazine pieces ...: The New Yorker, October 25 and November 15, 1947.
[>] Moses's Stuyvesant Town ...: Mumford, "Prefabricated Blight," The New Yorker, October 30, 1948.
[>] Moses had responded ...: Mumford and Robert Moses, "Stuyvesant Town Revisited," The New Yorker, November 27, 1948.
[>] Moses devoted himself ...: Mumford, "The Gentle Art of Overcrowding," The New Yorker, May 20, 1950.
[>] One of his columns detoured ...: Ad, The New Yorker, December 13, 1947.
[>] In 1955, Mumford stepped up ...: "The Roaring Traffic's Boom" ran in four installments in The New Yorker: March 19, April 2, April 16, and June 11, 1955.
[>] By the late summer of 1957 ...: "Is New Road Program Bogging Down?" US News, May 10, 1957.
[>] Look magazine, while ...: George Koether, "Roadblocks to New Highways," Look, October 29, 1957.
[>] "Each step," he explained ...: "Where Are Those Superhighways?" Saturday Evening Post, December 14, 1957.
[>] But most Americans ...: My passage on suburbanization was informed by Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Homer Hoyt, "The Changing Principles of Land Economics," Urban Land Institute Technical Bulletin 60 (1967); Carol A. O'Connor, "Sorting Out the Suburbs: Patterns of Land Use, Class, and Culture," and Michael H. Ebner, "Re-Reading Suburban America: Urban Population Deconcentration, 1810–1980," American Quarterly 37, no. 3 (1985); Peter Mieszkowski and Edwin'S. Mills, "The Causes of Metropolitan Suburbanization," Journal of Economic Perspectives 7, no. 3 (Summer 1993); and "Why People Move Out of Cities," US News, August 10, 1956.
[>] The new houses ...: Herbert J. Gans, The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community (New York: Vintage Books, 1967); James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape (New York: Touchstone, 1994).
[>] A Virginia newspaper labeled ...: Robert C. Smith, "The New Suburbia: Concept of a 'Mass Individualism,'" Virginian-Pilot and Portsmouth Star, July 10, 1955.
[>] James W. Rouse, a Baltimore developer ...: Edmund K. Faltermayer, "We Can Cope with the Coming Suburban Explosion," Fortune, September 1966.
[>] All of which is to say ...: Mumford, "Where the Great City Spreads," The New Yorker, March 3, 1956.
[>] It wasn't just households ...: "Shopping Centers Re-Studied," ULI Technical Bulletin 30 (February 1957).
[>] A month after Southdale's debut ...: "Too Many Shopping Centers?" Business Week, November 17, 1956.
[>] But before long the circumferentials ...: "Cities as Long as Highways—That's America of the Future," US News, April 5, 1957.
[>] Harry Truman's once-rural hometown ...: "I-70 Turns Towns into Cities," Kansas City Times, August 11, 1965.
[>] And on the strength of three-bedroom ...: Architectural Forum, January 1961.
[>] Outside Louisville ...: Simpson Lawson, "Interchanges Boost Value of Land, State Tells Court," Louisville Courier Journal, May 31, 1964.
[>] In Robeson County ...: Dick Brown, "Land Values Soar," Raleigh News & Observer, May 19, 1968.
[>] Farther out in the country ...: "Effect of Road Design on Property Values," Better Roads, May 1956; Claude C. Haren, "Rural Industrial Growth in the 1960s," American Journal of Agricultural Economics 52, no. 3 (August 1970).
[>] Factories mushroomed beside I-80 ...: Robert Evans, "New Industries Attracted by Keystone Shortway," (Harrisburg,
PA) Patriot-News, March 15, 1964.
[>] Chrysler cited the proximity ...: "Transformation by Road," Time, October 15, 1965.
[>] Interstate 35 spurred ...: "How the Superhighways Are Changing America," US News, August 31, 1959.
[>] Spartanburg, South Carolina, saw ...: "Boom Is Riding South Along Interstate 85," NYT, July 8, 1966; see also Haren, "Rural Industrial Growth in the 1960s."
[>] Mount Vernon, Illinois ...: Paul Critchlow, "Sleepy Town Revives in Roar of Traffic," Philadelphia Inquirer, July 23, 1973.
[>] Virginia's experience ...: History interviews with Turner and Douglas Fugate, Virginia's former highway boss (FCT)
[>] If built on top...: Ibid. See also C. W. Enfield, "Right-of-Way Acquisition for the National Interstate System," Better Roads, June 1957.
[>] The first scandal broke...: "Highwaymen at Work," Life, August 5, 1957; "Just Starting to Move," Better Roads, July 1957; "The Highway Billions," Fortune, September 1958; Fletcher Knebel, "Highway Robbery in Indiana," Look, December 10, 1957.
[>] Before long, New Mexico...: "Program Suspended," Better Roads, January 1958
[>] What with soaring...: "On Interstate Road Costs and Reimbursing States," Better Roads, February 1958
[>] "Congressman after congressman...": Richard Weingroff, "Essential to the National Interest," Public Roads 69, no. 5 (March–April 2006)
[>] Blatnik and his eleven...: History interviews.
[>] Parade followed suit ...: Jack Anderson, "The Great Highway Robbery," Parade, February 4, 1962
[>] In New Mexico, investigators...: Fletcher Knebel, "The Great Highway Scandals," Look, June 19, 1962; Saturday Evening Post, November 11, 1963. See also "Some 'Scandals' in the Roads Program," US News, May 13, 1963.
[>] Much to Turner's chagrin...: History interviews; "$40 Billion Highway Program in Trouble," US News, March 7, 1960; Stanley Meisler, "Super-Graft on Superhighways," The Nation, April 1, 1961
[>] A myth persists today...: History interviews.
[>] Another piece of conventional...: Ibid.
Part IV: The Human Obstacle
[>] One question confronting Moses...: James D. Dilts, "How Not to Run a Roadway," Sun, February 25, 1968; Mark Reutter, "The East-West Expressway," a master's thesis the Baltimore journalist produced in 1971, pieces of which he furnished to me; and Andrew M. Giguere, "'...and Never the Twain Shall Meet': Baltimore's East-West Expressway and the Construction of the 'Highway to Nowhere,'" a master's thesis completed by the Ohio University student in 2009
[>] Some of the back alleys...: Frederick J. Kreller, Sun, October 20, 1944
[>] But the slums...: "Artistic Freeway Urged by Experts," Sun, March 23, 1944; "Moses Group Favors Franklin Expressway," Sun, October 11, 1944; "Foes of Freeway Merge in Fight," Sun, March 19, 1945
[>] Moses had little patience...: Reutter, "The East-West Expressway."
[>] When the City Council...: "Building a Papier Mache Bridge from the Refuse of Citizen Crossfire on the East-West Expressway," Sun, April 26, 1972
[>] Employment there had seen no growth...: "The Inner Harbor & City Hall Plaza," pamphlet, Greater Baltimore Committee and Committee for Downtown, 1965
[>] "The arteries are clogged...": Herbert Fairbank speech to Advertising Club of Baltimore, November 13, 1946. Richard Weingroff supplied me with the text
[>] A few weeks later...: "Council Defeats Bill to Provide Plans for Part of Expressway," Sun, December 10, 1946
[>] While all this excitement ...: My passage on Joe Wiles's early life is based on interviews with his daughters, Carmen Artis and Carole Gibson.
[>] Stuck in a succession ...: Joe Wiles, letter of December 5, 1950, to Esther Wiles. She supplied me with a copy.
[>] The Wiles family ...: James M. Rubenstein and R. Ferguson, "The Impact of Relocation Activities on Baltimore," Journal of Housing 35, no. 10 (1978).
[>] Yet Wiles saw ...: Interviews with RNIA member Mary Rosemond, Artis, and Gibson.
[>] The same went for Wiles's performance...: Artis and Gibson interviews
[>] The first came...: Artis interview; "Rosemont Unit Fights New Factory," Baltimore Afro-American, April 9, 1957; "Councilmen Pessimistic on Factory," Baltimore Afro-American, April 13, 1957
[>] At almost the same time...: Artis interview; RNIA papers (Langsdale)
[>] Looking to avoid...: Susan West Montgomery, "Baltimore's Abbreviated Interstate System: The Consequence of Opposition, Legislation and Federal Intervention," a paper presented at the conference "Making Diversity Work: 250 Years of Baltimore History," November 15, 1996; Reutter, "The East-West Expressway"; "8-Lane Road Is Considered," Sun, November 1, 1956; "Project Basis for Stand on Road Plan," Sun, May 7, 1958; and James D. Dilts, "Changing City—'We Must Destroy You to...,'" Sun, August 4, 1968.
[>] Its household income...: "The Battle Lines of Baltimore," Innovation 3 (July 1969).
[>] Most outrageously...: Dilts, "How Not to Run a Roadway"; "Tyson Street Backers to See D'Alesandro Aides Today," Sun, October 3, 1956; "Planners Ease Tyson Street Blues," Sun, October 11, 1956; "Tyson Street Still in Danger Under New Highway Plan," Sun, July 18, 1957; "Tyson Street Plea Goes to Mayor," Sun, August 20, 1957; and "House Joins Fight to Save Tyson Street," Sun, February 27, 1958
[>] At first, the planners...: "Tyson Street Seen Doomed," Sun, July 19, 1957
[>] Property owners in Mount Vernon...: "Freeway Is Opposed," Sun, December 11, 1957. My description of the controversy also relied on Michael P. McCarthy, "Baltimore's Highway Wars Revisited," Maryland Historical Magazine 93, no. 2 (Summer 1998); "Group Opposes East-West Road," Sun, January 15, 1958; "Elevated Road Studied," Sun, February 20, 1958; "Dispute on Key Interchange Delays Expressway Plans," Sun, April 16, 1958; "Civic Groups Invited to Session," Sun, July 22, 1958; "Group Opposes Elevated East, West Road," Sun, October 22, 1958; and "Expressway Shift Urged," Sun, April 10, 1959.
[>] "What is happening...": Lewis Mumford, letter, Landscape Architecture, December 1958.
[>] The city's planners...: "City Buys 15 Acres for East-West Road," Sun, January 7, 1959.
[>] When utility officials...: Francis Bello, "The City and the Car," Fortune, October 1957; "Downtown Traffic Cure," Better Roads, July 1957.
[>] Early speakers toed...: Richard H. Parke, "Housing Is Linked to Road Planning," NYT, September 10, 1957; "The New Highways: Challenge to the Metropolitan Region," Urban Land Institute Technical Bulletin 31 (November 1957).
[>] By and large...: "The New Highways"; William Yardley, "Warily, Connecticut Sets Its Agenda for New Roads," NYT, August 30, 2004.
[>] Just a month before...: Van R. Halsey Jr., "Lewis Mumford's Golden Day," New Republic, August 12, 1957.
[>] A half century later...: Lewis Mumford, "The Highway and the City," Architectural Record, April 1958
[>] Still bruised...: "Coordination," Better Roads, November 1958; E. H. "Ted" Holmes's March 2, 1969, speech to a Conference on Transportation and Community Values (FCT); and Richard Weingroff, "The Greatest Decade, 1956 to 1966," http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/50interstate.cfm.
[>] In San Francisco...: "The Revolt Against Big-City Freeways," US News, January 1, 1962; Henry Ehrlich, "The Great Freeway Fight," Look, September 25, 1962; "Taming the Urban Freeway: New Principles for Fitting Highways and Cities Together," Architectural Forum, October 1963; David Hapgood, "The Highwaymen," Washington Monthly, March 1969; and Raymond A. Mohl, "The Interstates and the Cities: Highways, Housing and the Freeway Revolt," a research report for the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, 2002.
[>] "It's the traffic...": Joe Allison, "Freeways—the Only Way," San Francisco News Call Bulletin, April 10, 1964.
[>] The San Francisco Chronicle campaigned ...: "A Move to Raze an Ugly Freeway," editorial, San Francisco Chronicle, August 29, 1962.
[>] MIT professor John'T. Howard...: "New View Points on Urban Transportation and Renewal," TAC, June 1957.
[>] David Cort of The Nation ...: David Cort, "Our Strangling Highwa
ys," The Nation, April 28, 1956.
[>] Harper's glumly observed ...: "Why Spoil the Adirondacks?" Harper's, October 1959.
[>] Daniel Patrick Moynihan...: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "New Roads and Urban Chaos," The Reporter, April 14, 1960.
[>] Mumford kept up his own attack...: "The Skyway's the Limit," The New Yorker, November 14, 1959.
[>] In mid-June 1959...: My account of the Bragdon committee's activities is informed by Mertz.
[>] He got it...: Eisenhower's letter, at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/dde1959.cfm.
[>] The shape of the entire program ...: Bragdon's account of the April 6, 1960, meeting is available at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/bragdon2.cfm.
[>] As Florida Trend magazine ...: "Florida's Hosting Industry: Poised on the Threshold of Change," Florida Trend, June 1965. See also "The Great Uprooting," Time, March 24, 1958.
[>] Anyone visiting Quapaw ...: William E. Blundell, "Bypassed Business: New Interstate Roads Slash Tourist, Farm Trade in Some Towns," Wall Street Journal, September 19, 1962.
[>] A long stretch of the Lincoln ...: "Far Less Traffic on Hwy. 30," Grand Island (NE) Independent, August 4, 1970.
[>] Connecticut's neon-lined ...: "Where Business Longs for the Good Old Days," Business Week, April 9, 1964.
[>] The experience of Bertha Amick ...: Blundell, "Bypassed Business." See also "Who'll Get Helped or Hurt by Auto Freeways," US News, December 21, 1956.
[>] Remember Lida, Nevada? ...: Lida is not the settlement farthest from an interstate highway; that distinction belongs to Morgan, Montana, at U.S. 191's northern terminus, which is 191.4 miles removed from the system. But at more than 165 miles off, Lida's a haul, nonetheless. I found the nearest Cracker Barrel by plugging Lida's Zip Code into the restaurant chain's website, using the eatery's street address (in St. George, Utah) to get its map coordinates, then using a Web-based cartographic program to pinpoint the distance between the two.
[>] The interstates eased the path ...: "How the Superhighways Are Changing America," US News, August 31, 1959.
[>] A 1964 Kentucky State ...: "What Happens to Farms Divided by Super Roads?" Louisville Courier-Journal, February 2, 1964. See also "An Evaluation of Partial Taking of Property for Right-of-Way," Public Roads 33, no. 2 (June 1964).