Maplewood saved from Route 78.

Ok explain how Route 78 was rerouted around Maplewood. What was the original route?

This is a complete and total guess on my part and is in no way based on fact, but looking at a map I would say that it probably would have gone through the south portion of Maplewood, probably near or through DeHart Park.

ETA: Is that the Hilton neighborhood, or is that name for a different area?

Yes, it's Hilton.

I've heard that highways going through a town/city ruins it. However, it might not be that simple. Maybe the highway causes the downfall of a city, or maybe towns/cities that are already on a decline are less able to fight having a highway cut through the middle of them.

Robert Moses was good at destroying neighborhoods by running highways thru them, and he didn't run them thru the rich parts...

I'm unsure about the dates relating to the highways running through East Orange, but both the Garden State and Interstate 280 cut through this town creating 4 different sections. When you look at the quality of the various single family and apartments, you can see that this town used to be something very special.

ETA: When we moved here Grassemere was still mayor and it never made any difference to me what his political affiliations were. He was one of the good guys...always working for Maplewood. If he was instrumental in preventing I-78 from encroaching on Maplewood, the only thing I can say is

What started this discussion. Other towns fought against 78 for years delaying it's completion.

Google tells me that the Parkway was built in 1947. 280 was built in the 60's.

Parsippany has Routes 287, 280, 80, 10, and 46. It is cut into sections, yet hasn't seen the same decline.

joy said:

Robert Moses was good at destroying neighborhoods by running highways thru them, and he didn't run them thru the rich parts...

Which of Mr. Moses' roadways do you believe we'd be better off without?

TomR

@TomR I think the point was that it was always the poorer sections that got sacrificed...

Scully said:

@TomR I think the point was that it was always the poorer sections that got sacrificed...

Yeah; I got the same impression.

Nonetheless, my question stands.

If you'd care to address it; I'd be interested to read your response tomorrow.

TomR

Robert Moses Expressways better off not built

Lomex
http://www.nycroads.com/roads/lower-manhattan/


Mid Manhattan Expressway
http://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2009/02/unbuilt-robert-moses-highway-maps/

Many people would also say the Cross Bronx Expressway destroyed that part of the Bronx.

I believe I read that the road was going to run where Boyden Avenue is. The much maligned Mayor Grasmere was able to rally support in Trenton to get the route changed. There have been a couple of threads on this here on MOL over the years.

This sounds like a job for @dk50b

Tom_R said:

joy said:

Robert Moses was good at destroying neighborhoods by running highways thru them, and he didn't run them thru the rich parts...

Which of Mr. Moses' roadways do you believe we'd be better off without?
TomR

Where did joy say that we'd be better off without the highways?

However, if you read The Power Broker, it seems pretty clear that he intentionally set out to destroy the Tremont neighborhood of the South Bronx.

Also, he did everything in his power to hobble public transportation. Maybe if he had supported public transportation, we wouldn't need all these highways, or at least they wouldn't be as crowded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Bronx_Expressway

Many have blamed the Cross Bronx Expressway for worsening the decay of neighborhoods in the South Bronx, with the prominent example being the neighborhood of Tremont. In Robert Caro's The Power Broker, the author argues that Moses intentionally directed the expressway through this neighborhood, even though there was a more viable option only one block south.[19] Many of the neighborhoods it runs through have been continually poor since before its construction, partly due to the lowered property value caused by the Expressway. This is partially responsible for the public opposition to many other planned expressways in New York City that were later cancelled – in particular, the Lower Manhattan Expressway.[20]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Bronx

The Cross Bronx Expressway, completed in 1963, was a part of Robert Moses’s urban renewal project for New York City. The expressway is now known to have been a factor in the extreme urban decay seen by the borough in the 1970s and 1980s. Cutting through the heart of the South Bronx, the highway displaced thousands of residents from their homes, as well as several local businesses. The neighborhood of East Tremont, in particular, was completely destroyed by the Expressway.

bobk said:

The much maligned Mayor Grasmere was able to rally support in Trenton to get the route changed.

Much maligned? Maybe when he was mayor, but certainly not in the last ten years on MOL.

I for one have never heard a bad word said about him.

Tom_R said:

joy said:

Robert Moses was good at destroying neighborhoods by running highways thru them, and he didn't run them thru the rich parts...

Which of Mr. Moses' roadways do you believe we'd be better off without?

TomR

The ones surrounding Flushing Meadows. Most difficult to access park I know of.

There's a pretty conspicuous southern bend of 78. It's not hard to imagine how if that bend wasn't there the highway would cut right through the southernmost part of Maplewood. If that was the case that neighborhood would have been partly demolished and partly cut off from the rest of town.

@Tom_R Never said we'd be better off without them. As others have posted, he took the path of least resistance.

I-280 definitely contributed to deterioration in Orange and East Orange.

Am I missing something here? The portion of I-78 near Maplewood followed state route 24, which I believe was built in the 1920s. I suppose the question might be: When did route 24 become a limited-access freeway.

If this was the case I am sure that Vic would have taken credit for this as well.

When I first visited this area in the late 80s, Rt 24 basically ended at the Short Hills Mall/JFK Parkway. It didn't get extended all the way to 287 until the early '90s.

There was going to be an exit not too far past the mall. There is an overpass with an abandoned cloverleaf. You can see it on Google maps.

When I first moved here, I biked and skated on the yet to be opened stretch of 24 between the Mall and Morristown.

I have never read anything about 78 being intentionally routed around Maplewood, but I have read about it being intentionally routed around the Weequahic neighborhood in Newark and the core of Hillside.

The NYT Historical has a few articles about Weequahic and Hillside residents vigorously opposing 78 being built through their communities. I didn't see an article about Maplewood residents doing the same thing, so I don't know if a 78 alignment through Maplewood was seriously considered.

The plan that was finally implemented was the one that Hillside favored and Newark opposed, although there was some respect for the core of Weequahic and what was then an economically thriving neighborhood.

Poor Newark.

Google to the rescue.....although, I am unable to locate any old proposed I-78 alignment maps, Maplewood was probably drawn into the conflict mentioned below involving Springfield, Union and Hillside over alignment. The bigger fight was over placing the highway thru the Watchung Reservation.

First----this lovely but mostly unrelated gem.....who knew the Panama Canal will soon impact traffic here?

I-78 is a major road linking ports in the New York City and New Jersey area to points west, and sees over 4 million trucks annually, with trucks representing 24% of all traffic. Truck traffic on the road is projected to rise once the widening of the Panama Canal is completed in 2015, when more Asian ships are expected to use East Coast ports. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_78

Second----1955 plan for NY area interstates:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:1955_Yellow_Book_maps#/media/File:New_York,_New_York_1955_Yellow_Book.jpg


Third, brief history of I-78

http://www.nycroads.com/roads/I-78_NJ/

In 1957, the New Jersey State Highway Department proposed the 59-mile-long "FAI Corridor 102," a toll-free Interstate highway linking the New Jersey Turnpike near Newark Airport with the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton area of Pennsylvania. The freeway, known unofficially as the Phillipsburg-Newark Expressway, supplemented the existing US 22 arterial, and included the already opened expressway replacement sections of US 22. It received the preliminary designation of I-80N in late 1957, joining the I-80S designation (the original designation of the Pennsylvania Turnpike) near Harrisburg. In mid-1958, the freeway was re-designated Interstate 78, the main link between New York and the Harrisburg area.

EARLY RESISTANCE TO I-78: Construction of the first two stretches of Interstate 78 progressed with little resistance in western New Jersey. In contrast, the eastern stretches of I-78 were met with considerably more resistance.

Soon after I-78 was proposed in 1957, city officials in Newark fought for more than a decade to have the expressway routed around the city's Weequahic section. After an unsuccessful fight, the pro-highway forces won, and 469 homes and more than 100 businesses had to be demolished over a nine-block area to make way for I-78.

About ten miles to the west, residents in Springfield, Union Township and Hillside also fought unsuccessfully to stop sections of I-78 from running through their communities. These municipalities fought each other, and even neighborhood groups fought each other, to have the highway constructed anywhere but their neighborhood. By the late 1960s, these communities lost the battle to stop I-78.

THE WAR AT WATCHUNG: In 1965, the New Jersey State Highway Department planned the route of I-78 to go through Watchung Reservation, a natural reserve owned by Union County. Before the first bulldozers could clear land for the project, new Federal legislation that became effective on January 1, 1970 mandated lengthy, expensive environmental studies and halted construction.

In the next dozen years, the FHWA and the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) spent $2 million just on studies to find alternatives to putting I-78 through the reservation. During this time, Union County officials and environmental groups pressured the state and Federal governments to either reroute the freeway, or make concessions to them to forgo their opposition.

In October 1982, Governor Thomas Kean approved the final construction plan for this missing five-mile link of I-78. The final plan had I-78 running through 3.5 miles of the Watchung Reservation, requiring the acquisition of 66 acres from Union County. In return for ending its opposition to I-78, the state gave Union County 70 acres of nearby state-owned land, plus $3.6 million for construction of new equestrian facilities and a Boy Scout camp.

This five-mile section between Scotch Plains and Springfield, which consists of six lanes throughout its entire length, was completed in August 1986 at a cost of $110 million. To mollify concerns of environmentalists and local residents, engineers designed the freeway to blend in with the topography. Three cut-and-cover sections at Nikesite Road, W.R. Tracy Drive and Glenside Avenue provide for continuous park use by both Watchung Reservation visitors and resident wildlife. Split-level roadways, brown signposts and lightposts, natural and artificial sound barriers, and catch basins for runoff are some additional features of the section through Watchung Reservation. (Years later, however, the NJDOT paid to remove sedimentation from the bottom of Lake Surprise that occurred during construction of I-78.)

Thanks for sharing, JD.