A good location for the Phantom Tollbooth
By adamg - Fri, 05/02/2008 - 1:22pm.
Wade Roush walks around, photographs the ghost cloverleaf of Canton, built for the Highway that Never Was - the Southwest Expressway meant to gouge through Boston and Cambridge (along the route of today's Orange Line, basically).
- Add new comment |
- Send to friend |
| 
| 
| 
Transportation history gets
Transportation history gets me all hot and bothered.
The Farmington stack
Then there's the four-level stack in Farmington, Connecticut, which is mostly unused. I'd always wondered about that one, and the article on the Canton interchange prompted me to do a Web search for information about it.
Memphis
When I lived in Memphis, you could often see little bits of a failed highway project that was canceled when residents objected to the notion of it plowing directly through the city's largest, and loveliest part.
There were highway bridges in the middle of wooded areas up until a few years ago.
San Francisco, but in reverse
An elevated 2 decker freeway had been built along the Embarcadero back in the 50s effectively cutting off access to the waterfront from the financial and shopping districts downtown. Sound familiar?
It's hard to believe it was the case when you stand at the foot of Market Street looking east at the Ferry Building (now filled with shops and eateries à la Quincy Market) and watch the vintage streetcars go by packed with tourists. While not directly responsible, the World Series Quake of '89 helped to usher in the freeway's demise.
Nothing but Flowers
Interesting how some cities have restored access to waterfront areas by demolishing or removing collapsed freeways.
I was in SFO a couple of weeks before the quake in '89, again a year later, and again only very recently. In '89 it was a highway that seemed in the way of everything. In '90 it was in collapsed ruins. This past February, I biked down into the district and it was very different than I remembered and quite vibrant.
Looking at the Greenway from the Long Wharf side on a regular basis, I can see signs of the rift in the city being knit back together, but the seams are still showing. It takes a good bit of time before what is there now will become indiscernible from that which once was.
Thanks, Wade Roush!
Great piece! And let us all be eternally
thankful that the Innerbelt never happened.
(My house in Central Square would have been
classified as collateral damage.)
There's a mural on the side of Microcenter
on Memorial Drive, in Cambridge. Kind of a
salute to the folks who stopped the madness.
I love that mural. Makes me
I love that mural. Makes me feel all good about things whenever I see it.
The Inner Belt would've destroyed much of Camberville that wasn't Harvard. Central Square split in twain, Union Square gone thanks to the I-93 interchange, Cambridgeport whomped, and I'm reasonably sure the Route 2 connector would've had a definite impact on the Davis-Porter corridor.
Wrurgh. Just crap all around.