This paper was delivered by my father, K.C. Parsons, at a conference in 1999 shortly before his death. It is one chapter of a larger unpublished work "The Baltimore Wars." My hope is that by posting this, a part of Baltimore History he knew so well can be told.
The Baltimore Wars - The Contenders and Their Values
By
Kermit C. Parsons, Professor,
Department of City & Regional Planning, College of Architecture, Art, and
Planning, Cornell University
A paper given at the Annual Conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools
of Planning / Planning History Track , Chicago,
Illinois, October 1999
copyright 1999, all rights reserved
Introduction
Baltimore’s problems with designing its freeway system in 1966 seemed almost
intractable. Twenty years of conflict over freeway location and design between
Baltimore political leaders, neighborhood residents, transportation planners,
state highway engineers, urban renewal planners, and urban designers had come
to a deadlock. Maryland State Road Commission (SRC) proposals for the Baltimore
City urban system of freeways threatened the older deteriorated neighborhoods
of Central Baltimore, many of which had been the object of serious neighborhood
improvement programs. The freeway locations proposed by the state highway
engineers threatened the process of renewal and resurgence in several of
Baltimore’s neighborhoods and the core commercial area. The successful Charles
Center redevelopment project initiated in the late 1950’s had led to further
ambitious planning for rebuilding the city’s Inner Harbor waterfront. The 1966
freeway state engineer proposals of SRC threatened this project’s potential for
excellence. Highway routes in Baltimore had been the subject of freeway
location and overall system design changes for over 20 years. One of these
freeways was still very near to construction in mid-1966 and there was no
agreement about its location and design.
The Urban Design Concept Team
Baltimoreans were unable to resolve their freeway system design conflicts. They
had reached an impasse by 1966, and so turned desperation into a creative act
by bringing Nathaniel Owings (ironically the outside expert) into the process
was to add new urban design, social, and spatial economic dimensions to the
freeway design process.
The idea of bringing such a national figure into the Baltimore freeway process late in 1966 was developed by Archibald Rogers, a prominent Baltimore architect, who had himself used an interdisciplinary team approach to the design of urban projects in a number of American cities in the early 1960’s.1 It was the age of “inter-disciplinary” in many organizations — a time when the hope that integration of knowledge from a number of subject areas which had become quite specialized would bring better solutions to problems which none of the now narrow areas of knowledge seemed able to develop.
The idea of bringing such a national figure into the Baltimore freeway process late in 1966 was developed by Archibald Rogers, a prominent Baltimore architect, who had himself used an interdisciplinary team approach to the design of urban projects in a number of American cities in the early 1960’s.1 It was the age of “inter-disciplinary” in many organizations — a time when the hope that integration of knowledge from a number of subject areas which had become quite specialized would bring better solutions to problems which none of the now narrow areas of knowledge seemed able to develop.
Rogers was member of an old Baltimore, Eastern Shore, Maryland family, well
connected with the power structure of Baltimore, its businessmen and lawyer
leaders. He placed his confidence in Owings, an outsider, and with the idea
that the introduction of non-engineering knowledge to highway design in an
integrated approach could provide better designs for Baltimore’s interstate
highways.
One of Rogers’ partners, George Kostritsky, was in the process of thinking
about preservation of a group of Baltimore’s historic buildings. The route
proposed by the State Roads Commission for interstate 1-83 cut a two-block
swath through the most important waterfront part of the Fells Point waterfront
historic area. Several Baltimore architects became involved in the Fells Point
discussions, and they provided the impetus which brought Rogers into
discussions with John Funk, Chairman of the Maryland State Road Commission
which was responsible for designing Baltimore’s freeway system. This enabled
Rogers to bring Owings into contact with Funk. And Funk agreed to bring Owings
into the process of rethinking the entire freeway system with an
interdisciplinary team. In desperation, local leaders, city officials, and the
city’s power structure invited Nathaniel Owings, a founding partner of Skidmore,
Owings and Merrill (SOM), to lead the group in the restudy of the impact of the
system and, it was implied to make changes in it.
Owings’ contribution to resolving the plans for the system and its detailed
freeway designs was carried out over the next five years. It took place in the
midst of an extraordinarily intense political debate about the freeways, about
the future of Baltimore’s neighborhoods and the future of its downtown. In the
mid 1960s and early 1970s, the Baltimore freeway conflicts (some participants
later called them “The Baltimore wars,”) and the approval of the plans
developed by Owings’ inter-disciplinary, multi-professional team did much to
make 1967 an important turning point in the history of freeways in American
cities.
The Baltimore freeway conflicts are especially revealing of how federal, state
and local government policies were played out in the older east coast, central
cities of the U.S.. They provide a translucent window on the connections
between expert knowledge and public decisions; and the people involved in these
critical decisions for Baltimore’s urban freeway system design were especially
knowledgeable, competent, and dedicated planners, architects, urban designers,
urban economists, housing economists, and elected officials.
The end result of the Baltimore freeway struggle was a significantly better
city. Baltimore also grew institutionally during this time of stress. And yet
there are strong indications of the existence of corruption, favoritism,
bribe-giving among the highway engineers and officials in high places in state government. Both were
characteristic of the planning process of the Interstate freeway system in
Baltimore. Approval of the Team’s proposals was especially rewarding for the
Team members, including: Owings, Harry Weese, Norman Klein, Stuart Bryant,
Peter Hopkinson, and Walter Netch; and for city and federal government
officials who wanted new freeway system proposals and were frustrated by the SRC’s
insistence on its proposals. This group included: federal head of the Bureau of
Public Roads, Lowell Bridwell, Baltimore Mayors Richard Schaeffer and Thomas
D’Alesandro; and Larry Reich, Baltimore’s planning director.
Events in Baltimore since federal, state, and local approval of the Team’s 1970
proposals have confirmed the good qualities of the team’s freeway planning.
Baltimore’s Inner Harbor downtown revival is relatively one of the most
successful CBD renewal programs in U.S. city. It is almost certain that it
would have been cut short of its present urban design quality achievements if
the SRC’s proposal for the “East-West Freeway bridge had been built across the
Inner Harbor, blocking access, chopping off the top of Federal Hill, drawing
tens of thousands of elsewhere-bound vehicles through the area and destroying
Inner Harbor’s unique sense of place (an end of the ocean access to the center
of a great city). Owings and the Urban Design Team played a major role in the
urban design quality of Baltimore’s CBD by shifting this leg of the 1-95
freeway south to Locust Point and Ft. McHenry in the middle bay, eventually
substituting it for the destructive route through the Inner Harbor area and
historic Fells Point in East Baltimore. And the Team developed several
alternatives for SRC’s Rosemont Freeway section of 1-70 and the West Baltimore
neighborhoods. The SRC proposal would have sliced several old Baltimore
neighborhood in two. It was eventually built, but has no connection to the
western part of 1-70 and so has no effect on the Rosemont neighborhood.
Nat Owings as an “outside?’ did do more for Baltimore than transfer lessons learned from his California freeway experience, fighting just as he had done many times before in to make Skidmore, Owings and Merrill an urban design problem solving organization. He put together a skilled SOM team with a coterie of transportation, urban design, and landscape architect and urban economic and housing consultants to move the Baltimore Interstate highway project off dead center. They designed a new system that worked for traffic needs and other goals, and Owings fought to get it adopted locally, by the SRC, and the federal BPR.
Nat Owings as an “outside?’ did do more for Baltimore than transfer lessons learned from his California freeway experience, fighting just as he had done many times before in to make Skidmore, Owings and Merrill an urban design problem solving organization. He put together a skilled SOM team with a coterie of transportation, urban design, and landscape architect and urban economic and housing consultants to move the Baltimore Interstate highway project off dead center. They designed a new system that worked for traffic needs and other goals, and Owings fought to get it adopted locally, by the SRC, and the federal BPR.
Like London’s John Nash, Paris’ Georges Haussmann and Chicago’s Daniel Burnham,
Owings understood that the key transportation elements of an urban highway
system, like Baltimore’s urban freeway network, were opportunities not only to
facilitate traffic movement in established cities, but also to stimulate
desired development within the city and at the city’s edge. Owings and his design team developed the ideas
of planner Dave Wallace and landscape architect Ian McHarg, with Baltimore’s
city planners, to create alignments that would also provide development
opportunities and an orienting and dramatic series of visual experiences for
the motorist; experiences that would exalt the city and create opportunities
for related land uses that would support community values. Like Burnham, Nat
Owings was a rare blend of idealist, pragmatist, and innovative planner who
knew how to work effectively with public-sector officials and developers and
how to help develop political processes that worked to support the historic and
environmental design values he sought to implement.
So there were significant victories for the Urban Design Team in Baltimore: the
realization of the right facilities beautifully designed and located in good
relationships to the city’s fabric. At the same time the system well serves
Baltimore’s needs for vehicular access to its downtown, its port and its
industrial areas.
Of course there were also Team failures: there has been little or no Baltimore
“joint development” (multiple use of freeway rights of way for highways and
other urban needs schools, parks, housing, etc.) in Baltimore; nor has there
been much collateral development (such as industry, housing, and wholesale
distribution centers adjacent to freeway interchanges or near in areas of land
taken for but not needed for construction of freeways). The poor people and
working class (mostly Black), who live in Baltimore neighborhoods north and
south of the “Franklin Mulberry Corridor,” have not acquired the better schools
and recreation areas so carefully planned as “air rights” joint development
proposed by the Team’s planners (working with city staff) as compensation for
the damage caused by the freeway in their midst. Still the failures of the
Team’s end product were fewer than the gains many or most of Baltimore’s people.
Urban Freeway Design Ideas
In mid-1966, Baltimoreans were beginning to sense the stirring of possible
better futures in redevelopment opportunities in its downtown and in the
improvement of its older residential areas. Now there was an opportunity in
this reawakening city to apply some of the new knowledge, knowledge that had
been developing in the late 50’s and early 60’s about designing high speed
highways to serve the traffic needs of older cities while minimizing the
damage.
Technical knowledge about how to design such roads from a traffic engineering
standpoint and from the standpoint of the safety of the driver and passengers
had come a long way since the development of “free-flowing limited access”
roadways in Germany and the United States in the late 1920s and early 30’s. The
earliest such roadways had been mostly in rural locations or suburban areas.
Now, for the first time on an extensive scale in Baltimore in the mid and late 60’s,
city planners were thinking of the urban freeway as a large scale urban design
problem. How could we design the high speed, high-capacity urban freeway system
so that it maximized the opportunities of the city freeway driver for access an
aesthetic experience? How could we integrate these massive construction
projects into existing urban residential neighborhoods, commercial and
industrial areas in the city?
Several efforts to integrate the ideas of professionals other than engineers
into urban freeway design preceded Owings’ Urban Design Concept Team project.
One was started in California in 1963 when the California Highway Department
retained landscape architect, Lawrence Halperin, as a consultant on
“aesthetics”. Halperin was appointed before new freeway routes were
established, as “an integral part of the study team.” In this work he
established “some freeway design principals”: 2
1. “The sinuous curving
pattern of country freeways is on the whole inappropriate in the city. Cuts
across the existing grid, disrupts neighborhood patterns, and leaves odd,
difficult [parcels and blocks] to integrate. Urban freeways should follow the
grid of the city.”
2. “The wide right of way with variable median strips and planted verges and shoulders is inappropriate in cities because it wrecks havoc with existing structures, takes too much land off the tax rolls, and separates neighborhoods by great swaths cut through a city’s fabric.”
3. “Urban freeways should fit into existing and projected land-use and topographic patterns in a city, i.e.: they should go between neighborhoods not through them, or they should go between two different land uses such as industrial and residential land utilize topographical changes by sliding along the low hills where they cannot be seen.”
2. “The wide right of way with variable median strips and planted verges and shoulders is inappropriate in cities because it wrecks havoc with existing structures, takes too much land off the tax rolls, and separates neighborhoods by great swaths cut through a city’s fabric.”
3. “Urban freeways should fit into existing and projected land-use and topographic patterns in a city, i.e.: they should go between neighborhoods not through them, or they should go between two different land uses such as industrial and residential land utilize topographical changes by sliding along the low hills where they cannot be seen.”
4. “Urban freeways should be condensed and concentrated, not spread out. They
should employ urban, not rural aesthetics. Accordingly, they must use multi-
level, split-level, depressed, and elevated groupings to facilitate
concentration of the road bed.”
5. “Urban freeways should be integrated with the city and not simply be
corridors through it. They should pass through buildings, have
shops...restaurants and parking garages integrated into their structure.”
6. “Freeways should be built as part of a total community development, not unilaterally. They can take the lead in generating amenity in a city in new or rebuilt areas by having parks and playgrounds pass under them, new structures built over them. Ultimately it is the design of the environment of the freeway which counts more than the structure itself.”
6. “Freeways should be built as part of a total community development, not unilaterally. They can take the lead in generating amenity in a city in new or rebuilt areas by having parks and playgrounds pass under them, new structures built over them. Ultimately it is the design of the environment of the freeway which counts more than the structure itself.”
Cohn
Buchanan’s research in England had called for a freeway design process which
required new cooperative working relationships between highway engineers,
architects’ urban designers, landscape architects, public officials, and
citizens’ organizations.3
Donald Appleyard, Kevin Lynch and John Meyer’s volume The View From the Road
approached the art of designing the freeway from the point of view of driver
and passenger experiences while traversing it. Lynch and Appleyard’s aesthetic criteria for the view of the highway traveler,
were organized under five headings: “1) The form of the expressway should not
subject him to excessive stress, domination, annoyance, or depredation; 2) All
decision points and interconnections should be visually distinct, clear; 3)
Each expressway and its major segments should have its own visual character,
continuity and directional clarity, and be related to other expressways and
different circulation systems on some systematic basis; 4) Each route should
provide a coherent, rhythmic, vivid, pleasant and progressive sequence of
visual events; and 5) The principal features, symbols and activities of the
landscape should be visible and visibly related to the expressway.4
National Policy Changes and Organizing the Baltimore Urban Design Team
In January 1967, while the Baltimore urban design concept team idea was being
developed, President Johnson established for the first time in the U.S. a
separate Department of Transportation. Rex M. Whitten, an advocate of
“conventional” freeway design had been U.S. Public Roads Administrator for a
decade resigned. He was replaced by Lowell Bridwell as director of the Bureau
of Public Roads (BPR) within the larger Department of Transportation. Whitten
had never fully accepted the reality of urban design criticism of the Bureau’s
approach to interstate highways.
Baltimore freeway route for 1-95 in the system which was known in Baltimore as the “1O-D” plan was in controversy. It was to connect to a downtown crossing located on the southern side of the Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The Inner Harbor area was being considered as the potential site for a major urban improvement project. (Illustration: 1O-D Plan)5
Owings conception of the composition, missions, and operations of his new kind of planning team was to be tested on. the design of this “southwest leg” of the downtown freeway system. He insisted on a leadership role for the “planner-architect” to represent the “Place” aspects of the total problem,” which he wrote, were “being treated more and more as second class problems.” The Team was to test its concepts that could provide “an old and beautiful city such as Baltimore with a nontoxic system of transportation movement and work to preserve the sense of her grand location and history.”
When Archibald Rogers call from Baltimore to San Francisco in September, 1966, Owings was surprised; and he was “enthusiastic” and “interested.” Rogers asked if he and some of his SOM staff members could attend a meeting in Baltimore early in October with John Funk, the chair of the Maryland State Roads Commission (SRC). They were to discuss Owings’ participation in a multi-professional team design approach to design for Baltimore’s stalled inter-state freeway system.6
John Weese of SOM’s San Francisco office was available. He was also a very fortunate choice for manager of the team for the next three years. He provided the day-today internal organizational and “coping” skills that served the project well especially through its difficult early stages. Weese became the manager member of a standard three person SOM project team: partner (Owings), manager Weese, designer (Norman Klein). This was a combination that had served SOM well since the mid 1940s.
Baltimore freeway route for 1-95 in the system which was known in Baltimore as the “1O-D” plan was in controversy. It was to connect to a downtown crossing located on the southern side of the Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The Inner Harbor area was being considered as the potential site for a major urban improvement project. (Illustration: 1O-D Plan)5
Owings conception of the composition, missions, and operations of his new kind of planning team was to be tested on. the design of this “southwest leg” of the downtown freeway system. He insisted on a leadership role for the “planner-architect” to represent the “Place” aspects of the total problem,” which he wrote, were “being treated more and more as second class problems.” The Team was to test its concepts that could provide “an old and beautiful city such as Baltimore with a nontoxic system of transportation movement and work to preserve the sense of her grand location and history.”
When Archibald Rogers call from Baltimore to San Francisco in September, 1966, Owings was surprised; and he was “enthusiastic” and “interested.” Rogers asked if he and some of his SOM staff members could attend a meeting in Baltimore early in October with John Funk, the chair of the Maryland State Roads Commission (SRC). They were to discuss Owings’ participation in a multi-professional team design approach to design for Baltimore’s stalled inter-state freeway system.6
John Weese of SOM’s San Francisco office was available. He was also a very fortunate choice for manager of the team for the next three years. He provided the day-today internal organizational and “coping” skills that served the project well especially through its difficult early stages. Weese became the manager member of a standard three person SOM project team: partner (Owings), manager Weese, designer (Norman Klein). This was a combination that had served SOM well since the mid 1940s.
From
the beginning, it was clear that the Baltimore project was to be large and
complex. Rogers described it in terms of the size of the design fee:
“$8,000,000 of which the ‘team’ would receive $3,000,000.” The core of the
problem was the design for a 24— mile Baltimore inner-city expressway system.
Rogers had developed the idea of an interdisciplinary urban design concept team
and had sold it to John Funk, Baltimore city officials and to the Bureau of
Public Roads. The idea of the team approach was to engage a full range of the
needed professional skills and knowledge (aesthetic, economic, and social as
well as traffic and highway engineering) in resolving the large-scale urban
design issues generated by the urban freeway.
But why Owings? When asked later why
choose him as “captain” of the team? Rogers recalled that his choice was “the
only logical one”. “Who else?”… he said.7 range of talent, the size
of the organization, and its experience with freeway and road design projects
were impressive. But as important were Owings personal attributes: vigorous
partisanship in environmental matters, national recognition as head of the John
Kennedy’s and the Lyndon Johnson’s efforts to redesign and rebuild Pennsylvania
Avenue, and his consummate political skill: an ability to operate successfully
in the complex struggle of urban and national politics. All were essential
qualities for the leader of the hard campaign Rogers saw ahead. Rogers defined
the Team’s problems:
a) Designing the freeways’ large-scale physical elements in relation to the
differing types of physical environment they traversed.
b) Considering the freeways’ functions in relations to the functions of these local environments including land use, vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
c) Assuring the preservation of special environmental qualities such as residential and historical values in neighborhoods traversed.
d) Providing amenities (special planting and other boundary elements), where possible within and abutting the freeway system.
e) Considering aesthetics (as well as engineering) in the design of the forms of roadways, structural elements.
b) Considering the freeways’ functions in relations to the functions of these local environments including land use, vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
c) Assuring the preservation of special environmental qualities such as residential and historical values in neighborhoods traversed.
d) Providing amenities (special planting and other boundary elements), where possible within and abutting the freeway system.
e) Considering aesthetics (as well as engineering) in the design of the forms of roadways, structural elements.
As
one of his college friends once commented, Owings was “not behind the door when
courage was passed out.”8 He enjoyed a fight for something he
believed in. He compared the Baltimore freeway design problems to those he had
faced frequently as chairman of President Johnson’s Temporary Commission on Pennsylvania
Avenue: Where should one start on a complex problem? While he understood that
the main elements were traffic and vehicles and “would see to it that the whole
thing was [reevaluated] not only in terms of traffic and vehicles but in terms
of the neighborhood through which it goes...and the feeling and the attitudes
of the people.”
Leaders, Movers, Thinkers and Shakers
After the October 6,1966 meeting in Baltimore, SOM’s tasks took on a very definite form: developing a Southwest leg work program and working on this freeway corridor study while also defining the scope of the larger system study. Owings asked Norman Klein of SOM’s San Francisco team office to join the project soon after the key meeting in Baltimore. The three-person standard SOM team was now in place: Owings as partner-in- charge, John Weese as project manager, and Norman Klein as city planner/urban designer. Within four days, Klein and three other members of the SOM staff from the San Francisco office were in Baltimore beginning interviews and discussions with SRC, city engineers, and other city agencies, collecting data on neighborhoods, and coordinating the development of traffic projections and system design evaluation procedures with their traffic engineer, Wilbur Smith ,and the engineering firm of Parsons, Brinkerhoff, Quadeand Douglas.9
John Weese, as the management partner, was concerned with the day to day
coordination within the team and with other SOM offices throughout the country,
for developing the detailed contract and for scheduling the work and staff in
accordance with Owings’ overall strategy.10 Klein, as the chief City
Planner/designer, concentrated on the substance of defining the problems,
collecting data and laying out and performing the detailed design work program.
Owings task was philosophical: defining the policy-making process. He also
re-organized the team from time to time and protected it against those who
would diminish its role in the freeway design-decision process. This was
accomplished in part at major policy meetings of the multi-firm urban design
team’s Board of Control made up
of the leaders of the four firms that ultimately established the joint venture
later called Urban Design Concept Associates (UDCA).
Dave Barton, Chairman of the City Planning Commission and Weese began
exchanging information and establishing working relationships, as did Norman
Klein and Hugh Downs, (staff director of SRC).
At this point of the process, the Urban Design Team’s project’s most enthusiastic and perhaps only strong State official supporter, John Funk, was chairman of the Maryland SRC, but he had only three months longer in office. The election of Spiro T. Agnew as Governor of Maryland early in November 1966 and his assumption of office in mid- January 1967 brought new leadership to SRC. An engineer, Jerome Wolff, who had worked previously for Agnew as Director of Public Works for Baltimore County was appointed the new SRC chair. He and other new members of SRC were much opposed to Team ideas.
At this point of the process, the Urban Design Team’s project’s most enthusiastic and perhaps only strong State official supporter, John Funk, was chairman of the Maryland SRC, but he had only three months longer in office. The election of Spiro T. Agnew as Governor of Maryland early in November 1966 and his assumption of office in mid- January 1967 brought new leadership to SRC. An engineer, Jerome Wolff, who had worked previously for Agnew as Director of Public Works for Baltimore County was appointed the new SRC chair. He and other new members of SRC were much opposed to Team ideas.
In November, 1966, another staff member joined the Team: City Planner Stuart
Bryant moved to work in Baltimore. In December, he met with city and state and
local neighborhood representatives and started field work. Bryant was the first
individual to establish residence in the Baltimore area and one of the first to
move into the Teams’ new Baltimore offices in the SRC building on Cathedral
Parkway. Other Team members had been working out of SOM’s Washington, DC
office. Bryant was the Team staff member most dedicated to preserving
Baltimore’s neighborhoods.
The Team’s late 1966 analysis of the southwest leg freeway corridor brought
into play all of the elements later utilized in the larger system and corridor
study: analysis of traffic data and traffic projections for alternate systems,
analysis of social and the environmental impacts, studies of the effects on
land use in the vicinity of alternate routes and the use of new techniques for
roadway design and large scale city-wide aesthetic issues.
The conclusions of the Team’s Southwest Expressway study were presented at the
meeting with the Mayor’s Coordinating Committee and the PAB on January 5, 1967:
Facilities were needed to respond to intracity and CBD traffic desires... and “more
advantages than disadvantages and more opportunities than problems”.. .would be
provided by some new version of this expressway corridor.11
The Team had reviewed data on land use, family relocation loads, environmental
conditions and new development potentials. The negative conclusions of Pratt’s
traffic assignments for the entire 1O-D system (Figure 1) were perhaps the most
provocative part of
the report. The impact of the SRC’s 1O-D routes on the housing stock and
neighborhood development potential as well as aesthetic considerations were
considered for both the “B&O / Hamberg-Paca” Southwest corridor and a new
“Gwynns Falls Middle Branch / Sharp Ledenhall corridor.”
 |
| Figure 1: 10-D Freeway corridors and their traffic evaluations |
Some of the most interesting conclusions of the report were the traffic
assignments for the entire Baltimore Interstate system. They were presented in
September 1966 for the Southwest Freeway study. Only a small amount of traffic
from southwest of Baltimore which would be using the proposed 1O-D system would
be headed for downtown Baltimore from the south. 52% of the trips were
projected to be headed south and other points in the city with about 32% of
them headed for the northwest area. With this many trips headed for non-CBD
destinations. The obvious question about the 1O-D freeway system was: Were
there alternative routes that would provide better service with less disruption
to the zone immediately in and around the downtown? The Team’s traffic
assignments to the 1O-D system were soon to lead to the invention of a new idea
for the “Southwest Freeway:” a new “spur” entrance to the central business
district and an alignment named for the streets it paralleled in the
“Sharp-Ledenhall Corridor”.
Klein and the team had decided that “the proposed interstate freeway system for
Baltimore City (SRC’s 1O-D) .... [did] not answer for the need a complete and
comprehensive Baltimore transportation system. Consequently, it [was]
recommended that a detailed traffic and environmental analysis be undertaken as
part of the scope and services of the Concept Team.”
Klein specifically identified the major flaw of the 1O-D system design “. . .there are just too many major highways coming together in the area just south of the CBD. He thought that connecting the Southwest freeway to eastern extensions of 1-83 and 1-95 toward Philadelphia and New York at the Inner Harbor Bridge, creating a Venturi tube, was a disaster. He did not suggest an alternative to the Inner Harbor crossing, but it is highly probable that Klein and the team had already developed the idea of the Fort McHenry by-pass route as an alternative to the Inner Harbor bridge. 12
Klein specifically identified the major flaw of the 1O-D system design “. . .there are just too many major highways coming together in the area just south of the CBD. He thought that connecting the Southwest freeway to eastern extensions of 1-83 and 1-95 toward Philadelphia and New York at the Inner Harbor Bridge, creating a Venturi tube, was a disaster. He did not suggest an alternative to the Inner Harbor crossing, but it is highly probable that Klein and the team had already developed the idea of the Fort McHenry by-pass route as an alternative to the Inner Harbor bridge. 12
The SRC, the most important Maryland State element in the political contest
about of the Baltimore freeway system, now underwent a change in the political
scenery. The state contenders in the decision process were being shifted. Spiro
T. Agnew, former Chief Executive of Baltimore County, won the November 1966
Gubernatorial election. He assumed office of Governor of Maryland on March 1,
1967, and his old adviser Archibald Rogers was made director of SRC. Rogers and
others believed that the new governor would support the ideas of the Team, but
there was no assurance that their specific freeway recommendations would gain
his backing.
The Baltimore papers were reporting that city engineer, Bernie Werner, was
urging support for a new policy statement about the Team: there should be two
concept teams, one for city planners and urban designers and another for
engineers. It would have provided a compromise in which vested “responsibility
for detailed freeway design in the local engineering firms.”13
Owings, a Downtown Supporter and Equity Planner
Nat Owings’ speech before the Committee for Downtown in April 1967 was an eloquent reminder to Baltimoreans of their traditions, and of the valuable architectural assets to which they had given such careful attention in the design of Charles Center. And it was a condemnation of “conventional engineering procedures as well as an affirmation that Baltimore deserves better and would surely demand better. 14
Potential freeway-impacted Baltimore community groups believed that their views
would be seriously considered—they had expected some positive response and
tried to deal with the SRC Review Committee. What were these issues? Freeway
noise control.
Compensatory
community facilities. Relocation housing.
“Now,” he said, the Team had proposed “solutions [that are] rudimentary in
their simplicity. We propose to separate the through traffic that does not want
to go downtown from the traffic that does, and to do this by developing a
harbor crossing through the Ft. McHenry and adding an interstate route along
the Gwynns Falls from 1-70 south to 1-95.”
“And here,” he said “is where the ‘button-pushing’ might begin because there are still big decisions to be made between the proposed pared down facility along the given route (3-C) and—hold your breath—no crossing at the inner harbor at all.” (Figure 3)
“If you believe in miracles as I do,” he said, “then you can hope that a more ideal system than any that have been proposed to date will be devised, one that does not cross the inner harbor.” “I believe, of the sympathetic support by the federal government at critical levels.”28 Owings had indeed dropped a bombshell on the audience.
1 Charles Center Project, Cincinnati Downtown Plan and others.
2 Halperin, Lawrence, Freeways. New York: Reinhold, 1966.
22 Axelrod to Galston, September 1968. SOMJUDCA.
23 Baltimore Sun, 5 October 1968.
24 Interviews with Stewart Bryant. OPC (Owings Planning Collection), Ultimately to be placed in the Cornell University Archives.
In the Rosemont Neighborhood, the
issue was alternative proposals for 1-70 alignment. In Leakin Park it was
studies for the best use of the large undeveloped park area west of Rosemont.
Such designs were to be developed by Klein and other Team members.
But the hottest issues of all were raised in all neighborhoods by the Team’s
studies of relocation housing. This effort had been headed by Peter Hopkinson ,
a new Team member, beginning in the Fall of 1967. The scale of relocation
problems (assuming the success of all of the urban development programs then in
progress in Baltimore) was enormous. Over 20,000 Baltimore dwelling units were
to be demolished in the next ten years including 3,000 in freeway
rights-of-way. Of the dwellings to be demolished for the l0-D freeway system
over 90% were occupied by Black families and over 2,000 were located in West
Baltimore. Baltimore was and to a large extent is still a racially segregated
city with western residential areas including the 1-70 corridor predominantly
Black. In the eastern neighborhoods along the 1-85 freeway proposal of the 10-D
plan, 1-95,1-83 extensions families were predominantly Polish, Greek, Italian
and East European White. For some members of the Team like Bryant the fact that
the freeway plan affected all races in the same ways suggested a political
possibility: a coalition of the neighborhoods in opposition to it.
In their report to the Mayor, the Team placed the equity issues and some
solutions to the housing ones on the political agenda. Hopkinson proposed that
the Team provide architectural feasibility studies the five of the housing
sites most likely to provide immediate evidence of real progress: new housing
within the financial capability of relocatees.
What was the solution for the 21,000 plus dwelling unit housing displacements
expected in Baltimore over the ensuing 10 years? At first the Team position was
that this was a problem which could be dealt with only by new housing projects
which would be located within and near the freeway corridor. Then they decided
to work on a broader front: on both short and long term ideas for new housing.
With the arrival of Charles Abrams, as a freeway consultant to the Team early
in 1968, the issue was addressed as to what to do about Baltimore’s declining
stock of residential units by stimulating rehabilitation.
The Beginning of the End of the Inner Harbor Freeway Crossing
To start off July, 1968, with a celebratory bang 15 , Baltimore City
Planning Commission Chairman, Dave Barton, made a public statement implying
that the proposed Inner
Harbor crossing (of which he was a known opponent) might well be reduced or
deleted by studies ongoing “quietly” within the Team’s staff.
Downs of the SRC may not have been aware that the Team considering the
possibility of eliminating Inner Harbor Bridge included in Scheme 3, not in
3-A. Barton was edging this idea along. As the Team prepared for its late
August, 1968, PAB meeting, they had laid out their cards openly during informal
review sessions with the SRC’s Axelrod, and Wagner and Hammer of the BPR. At
the regular weekly review on August 6, Team member Pratt explained in detail
the freeway systems that were being analyzed and the results of the studies as
far as they had gone.
The Traffic Evaluation Summary prepared for the August 22, 1968, PAB Meeting
reviewed six Baltimore freeway schemes. Two were based on the SRC’s consulting
- engineers lO-D scheme first published in 1961 (they were considered “givens”
by the SRC). Four schemes were labeled: 3A, 3B, 3C and D. Scheme 3C, apparently
was the Team’s main contenders to replace 1O-D proposals. All of them were
analyzed in terms of displacement impact, taxable property taken total mileage
and lane mileage. The lO-D (1-A and 1-B) system evaluations projected major
deficiencies in terms of these systems’ traffic level values. There were many
traffic “E” and “F’ levels (forced flow low speeds, and stops). The evaluations
in the Southwest section of 1-95 which would have approached Baltimore on the
Inner Harbor bridge and for the entire length of 1-95 west of the central
business district to near the city line where projected at service level “E”.
The three “3” series was designed to alleviate both transportation and
environmental problems of the 1-A and 1-B systems. In the 3-A system there was
no Inner Harbor crossing and the condemnation ordinance segments along Fremont
Avenue were proposed for surface street improvements including a boulevard to
move traffic smoothly into and around the downtown area.
The first two systems, 1-A and 1-B (the 1O-D proposed SRC plan and the plan modified) both showed extensive “F’ levels of service in the downtown and east section. The third alternative (3-C) had “F’ levels of service only in about one section near the city line. The fourth system (3-A) added the Fort McHenry bypass route for 1-95, and also a stub into a spur in the Sharp-Ledenhall corridor with 1-70 proceeding down the Gwenns Falls Route to connect to 1-95 but “not crossing the harbor.” Otto Wagner, city engineer, added that “systems number 3-A and 3-B were outside the contract range ... and were studied without the authorization of PAB or the [SRC’s] IDBC. . . since it was outside the contract limits, it has not been performed.” Wolfe, who was not much involved in the details of the Team’s performance. He was distracted by the anticipation that Governor Agnew had become Nixon’s choice as the candidate for the Vice Presidency of the United States. 16 His reaction to the Team’s new ideas was slow.
The first two systems, 1-A and 1-B (the 1O-D proposed SRC plan and the plan modified) both showed extensive “F’ levels of service in the downtown and east section. The third alternative (3-C) had “F’ levels of service only in about one section near the city line. The fourth system (3-A) added the Fort McHenry bypass route for 1-95, and also a stub into a spur in the Sharp-Ledenhall corridor with 1-70 proceeding down the Gwenns Falls Route to connect to 1-95 but “not crossing the harbor.” Otto Wagner, city engineer, added that “systems number 3-A and 3-B were outside the contract range ... and were studied without the authorization of PAB or the [SRC’s] IDBC. . . since it was outside the contract limits, it has not been performed.” Wolfe, who was not much involved in the details of the Team’s performance. He was distracted by the anticipation that Governor Agnew had become Nixon’s choice as the candidate for the Vice Presidency of the United States. 16 His reaction to the Team’s new ideas was slow.
A Neighborhood Coalition
In July and August, 1968, the Movement Against Destruction (MAD) neighborhood
coalition was being organized. Coalition leaders including Wexler and Carr knew
(through Bryant) about the freeway system alternatives being studied by the Team.
So everyone in a position to influence decisions on Baltimore’s freeways knew
what the Team was up to by mid-August. But the committed members of the “road
group” were so sure that the old system plan was locked in place that they were
unable to see any possibility of alternatives, and they were unwilling to look
at alternatives.
Werner was not willing to admit that the Team’s alternative Fort McHenry plan
would eliminate much of the through traffic that it would be needed. Such a
connection or that much of the other traffic coming from the south or headed to
the north through the core area would use the route to bypass downtown, 1-95.
Werner was blocked from even acknowledging those opinions by his determination
that the SRC’s 1O-D system be built. 17 In his letter to Axelrod he
concludes that “the Team has acted completely outside the scope of their
engineering agreement in developing these alternative plans.”
Two days before the August 22, 1968, PAB meeting Owings wrote a long and very
carefully worded letter to Wolfe. He wrote that the Team understood that the
“givens (transportation corridors that had been established by ordinance and
approved by the Bureau of Public Roads), “are very difficult to change and that
every effort must be made to retain them within the overall design concept.
“However,” Owings wrote, “the Joint Venture Team leaders had decided that even
this limitation could be accepted by the Team.”
In another category, Owings reported to Wolfe the “Team’s unanimous finding is
that the interstate system as proposed [1O-D] makes a wholly disruptive impact
upon the inner city from all fundamental traffic and economic points of view.
Basically, he wrote that the forcing of 12 or more traffic lanes with massive
interchange structures through this area with its highly developed, urban,
fragile, topographic and historic qualities is physically destructive and operationally disastrous.”18 He noted
that “because the ramps involved would never adequately serve the CBD,
primarily due to overload. The freedom of CBD economic activities to even
exist, let alone operate, expand and prosper [would] not exist [if 1O-D was
built] It called for an eight-lane facility rapping itself around this area
tends to choke rather than facilitate expansion potential. “The route [also
essentially disregards the growing need for service to the major industrial
areas to the southeast and disregards entirely the potential of industrial
growth in south Baltimore and the Locust Point
Port facility.”19 Finally, he concluded, “this had been an
evolutionary process, the result of intensive studies,.. . A second look
indicates that Baltimore can have its cake and eat it too; it can have an
excellent inner city harbor crossing in scale with the old city that serves it
efficiently and aesthetically well and at the same time help develop a
renaissance of industrial growth in areas that should be more intensely
industrialized and that are hungry for the opportunity.”
At an August 21, 1968, meeting, attended by Mayor D'Alessandro, Council President William Schaeffer, Wolfe, Downs, Axelrod and other engineer members
of the SRC, and a representative of the BPR, Wolfe gave his official blessing to the
studies the Team had done. He said, “although it is only known by members of the PAB, the
Team was given verbal permission to do them by U. S. Secretary of Transportation
Boyd, Bridwell of the BPR, Wolfe of the State Roads Commission, and D'Alessandro,
Mayor of Baltimore City.
Axelrod said he thought that only actual construction of some freeways in
existing corridors would “spur the City Council to act on any old or new
condemnation ordinances.” Then in the same spirit of l discussing the merits or
lack of merits of any plan, but rather each others behavior, Axelrod said that
he felt that the team’s “community relations staff should show some restraint
in their handling of neighborhood meetings. In Ethel past [Team] staff members
had told the public to persistently pressure the Mayor and City Council to
repeal the ordinances.” (Figure 2).
At the official PAB meeting on August 22 the Team was formally authorized to
study the feasibility of the Fort McHenry expressway: its advantages in terms
of bypassing through traffic around the downtown and reducing the lanes of the
Inner Harbor bridge and even possibly (in scheme 3-A) eliminating the proposed
harbor crossing in the “Federal Hill”/Pier 6 area. This approval was now
revealed to the general public in great detail.20 Mayor D'Alessandro and Wolfe announced formally that the
Team now had authorization to work up “cost estimates for two alternative
proposals for building the Fort McHenry by-pass route” and refining their
traffic studies.
 |
| Figure 2: Team's Freeway System before later removal of Fells Point Segment and most of Franklin-Mulberry Corridor |
Editorial response to the decision was positive. “now.. . at last some fresh
thinking shows promise of dealing with the traffic realities Free to operate
outside the straightjacket of present condemnation lines,” editorialist
continued, “the Design Concept
Team can now do the job for which, in principle, it has received national
acclaim: laying out of an expressway
system that enhances rather than runs rough shod on the urban environment.”21
Axelrod was convinced that there was still another scheme beyond 3-A and 3C.22
He was outraged that Owings’ [had] “appea[ed] to lay people to push the public
opinion pressure buttons. [This] complicate[good decision making in the
sense that any rejection of Team proposals is now considered low minded,
culturally deficient, arbitrary and capricious.” Axelrod told the team leaders
that Owings was “again identifying some with white hats and some with black
hats.” 23
Late in August when the first news release about the Team’s alternative schemes
had appeared in the Baltimore newspapers, and the editorial comments began to
appear, Bryant developed the idea of making them the main topic of the annual
meeting of the Citizens Planning and Housing Association (CPHA). The CPI-IA was
a respected citywide organization of community and neighborhood groups.
Presentation of the work of the Team at its annual meeting, Bryant thought
could be made in a dramatic fonn. He discussed his idea with Norman Klein and
they decided to ask Nat Owings to make the principal address at the CPI-IA
annual meeting at the Lord Baltimore Hotel on September 24, two days before the
next PAB presentation. Bryant made sure (through Hettleman) that important city
officials were aware of plans for the speech. Hettleman was asked to convince Mayor D'Alessandro to introduce Owings. 24
Owings’ Great Stroke
Stewart Bryant’s preparations for Owings’ speech at the CPHA annual dinner
meeting were meticulous. He made sure through Hettleman that important city
officials were aware of plans for the speech. Hettleman was asked to convince
Mayor D'Alessandro to introduce Owings. Concerned that some of the leaders and
representatives of the newer neighborhood organizations might not attend,
Bryant personally invited many of them and when he discovered that a number
were not coming because of the cost of the dinner, he paid for some dinners
himself. Bryant may have charged this an as expense to SOM. Working on his own
time, Bryant made sure that the meeting room was large and that the invitation list was as complete as possible.25 Team member John
Gaiston, also an active member with Bryant of the Mayor’s Coordinating
Committee, invited all of the Team to the meeting. He recommended that each of
them take a table at $63.00 to support CPHA. Gaiston wrote them that he was
sure that “Nat’s talk will be interesting.” That may have been the
understatement of the year in Baltimore.
On the day, the evening of which Owings was to make his speech, Axelrod wrote
an ominous note for the file: “Today,” he wrote, “I was advised by Mr.
Gaiston’s secretary that Mr. Gaiston had accompanied Mr. Owings on a visit to the office of Stewart
Udall, Secretary of the Interior. I have no knowledge of the nature of the
business being discussed with Mr. Udal.”26 Axelrod had established a
“spy” in SOM’s Office. Maybe the SRC was about to enforce their contract UDCA
which prohibited on contract with high federal officials about the Baltimore
project. Owings’ interaction with “high federal officials” in Washington was a
major source of irritation to the team’s clients.
“Buzzy” Hettleman, Mayor D'Alessandro’ s administrative assistant and tennis
playing pal of Stewart Bryant, was a bit uneasy about Owings’ speech at the
fall dinner meeting of CPHA. Hettleman had much sympathy with the Team’s recent
proposals and he had been well briefed, but still he was concerned about the
contents of Owings’ speech. He said he hoped that “it [would] be possible for
you to duck any specific inquiries about details of the proposed alternative
alignment on the theory that this information must remain privileged until
[they] had an opportunity to report to the Policy Advisory Board.” He believed
that a public meeting of CPHA was not an appropriate occasion to release
detailed information about the Team’s new proposals.27 If he had
known what Owings had in mind he would have been appalled.
Owings’ speech was a “corker.” He devoted, as he usually did with important
speeches, an enormous amount of personal time to the preparation of drafts and
redrafting material suggested by others. It was an Owings’ speech: “I
privately, though never publicly, fall into a fit of depression; my plight
reminds me of a gentleman encountered in one of novels [about] a person
distinguished for ignorance [and] having but one idea and that one wrong.”
Owings believed, he told the assembled audience, that “man’s immortality is
gauged by how well, as a builder, he makes peace with his environment” and that
this “requires that we admit to the fallacies in our policies where they exist
and correct them....” “your city and your region can look forward with a
reasonable degree of faith to the achievement of ability without destroying its
integrity as a place.” He thought that Baltimore’s record of predictable
independence [indicated] that she should demand a freeway system clearly
fashioned to a subordinate role serving a balanced urban community.” And so, he
said, “the Urban Design Concept Team has unanimously agreed that the original
[SRCJ proposed interstate system would ‘fail as an efficient transportation
system.’ “And “that the system from the day it was opened to the public would
produce an impossible traffic situation; and that the impact of the proposed
east-west harbor crossing would be wholly disruptive upon the human values of
the inner-city.”
In an all out attack on the lO-D system, Owings said, “forcing ... twelve or
more traffic lanes with massive interchange structures through this area with
its highly developed urban, fragile, topographical and historic qualities would
be physically destructive and operationally disastrous. The ramps involved
could never adequately serve the CBD, primarily due to the overload. The
freedom of economic activities even to exist, let alone operate, expand and
prosper would also nonexistent. By nature an eight-lane facility wrapping
itself around the CBD would tend to choke rather than facilitate the expansion
potential. The route essentially [disregarded] the growing need for service to
the major industrial areas to the southeast and disregards entirely the
potential industrial growth in South Baltimore with its Locust Point port
facility for which the Mayor has great hopes.”
 |
| Figure 3: Team's connection of simple "flat place" bottom of bridge over freeway |
“And here,” he said “is where the ‘button-pushing’ might begin because there are still big decisions to be made between the proposed pared down facility along the given route (3-C) and—hold your breath—no crossing at the inner harbor at all.” (Figure 3)
“If you believe in miracles as I do,” he said, “then you can hope that a more ideal system than any that have been proposed to date will be devised, one that does not cross the inner harbor.” “I believe, of the sympathetic support by the federal government at critical levels.”28 Owings had indeed dropped a bombshell on the audience.
he
next day Baltimore’s newspapers reported in full on Owings speech, likening the
Baltimore freeway dilemma to the Vietnam War, and on his statement that a
“revised alignment proposed last month offered Baltimore the chance to have
both [freeways] and a viable city.”29
Some of the most powerful reactions to the speech must have been those of Wolf,
Axelrod, Downs, Werner and other Baltimore engineers who had insisted on the
interstate freeway system known as l0-D. It is possible (but apparently not
likely) that the reaction of Wolf was so strong that he canceled or “postponed”
the planned PAB meeting scheduled for September 26. It was rescheduled to
October 18. Owings noted this and discussed it with the newspaper reporters, on
the evening of the 24th or 25th of September. He reported that the meeting had
been postponed “at the request of the Commission.”
It is clear from later events, as we shall soon see, that Wolf and his
associates were very extremely displeased and unhappy about Owings massive
“news leak” before 500 prominent Baltimore citizens at the CPHA meeting. It
would be many months before the decisions about Baltimore’s freeway system and
the relationships between the SRC and the Team would be solved. But Owings had
leveled a mighty blow at the Inner Harbor crossing scheme. In one great stroke
in the right place at the right time he had shifted the chances of the Team’s
proposed plan being approved and built.
The next step in Axelrod’s attack came on October 3 when he ordered the end of
all Team community meetings. . . . When asked about this decision Axelrod
responded that [state] highway officials were “not looking for feedback where
residents don’t want an expressway because they are going to get an expressway.
The Mayor’s Decision on the Teams’ Freeway System Proposals
What had Owings and the team achieved at this point with his speech? The old 10-D scheme no longer was being discussed and there seemed no longer any question about the need for and the Fort McHenry route across the middle harbor of the Patapsco River. Stress on the Team members was still being caused by Wolfe who had stopped progress of payments to the Team. The SOM share of Joint Venture costs was about 126,000 man hours over budget. SOM was responsible for financing the largest part of the continuing payroll because of the delay of the client holding back on payments. By November, 1968, this included unpaid billings for three months totaling approximately $640,000.30
Early
in December, 1968, the city’s Inner Harbor redevelopment group and Embry
communicated again their deep concern about the low level expressway Inner
Harbor crossing proposed in the 3-C plan. Such a crossing would not permit use
of the harbor by the larger types of vessels which the Inner Harbor plan
contemplated as a part of the general activity of the project area. Such
vessels included tour boats, several large rigged sailing ships including
international visitors who they hoped would use the harbor. This included the
U. S. Constellation which had to be moved in and out at least every few years
for maintenance of its hull. The Mayor, convinced that this was an essential of
the Inner harbor Plan, communicated his displeasure about the conflict directly
to Wolfe.31
Agnew had been elected Vice President of the United States. Wolfe was to leave the chairmanship of the Maryland SRC and was to accompany Agnew to Washington after the inauguration in January, 1969. Again, at a crucial decision point in the process of freeway planning in Baltimore, the actors were changing their roles and leaving the Baltimore scene while the local scenery was being shifted around them. During the months of October and November, 1968, Wolfe and Owings had not discussed any further the series of formal accusations against UDCA that Wolfe had made early in October.
Agnew had been elected Vice President of the United States. Wolfe was to leave the chairmanship of the Maryland SRC and was to accompany Agnew to Washington after the inauguration in January, 1969. Again, at a crucial decision point in the process of freeway planning in Baltimore, the actors were changing their roles and leaving the Baltimore scene while the local scenery was being shifted around them. During the months of October and November, 1968, Wolfe and Owings had not discussed any further the series of formal accusations against UDCA that Wolfe had made early in October.
After the November presidential elections, Agnew’s election as Vice President
and his request to Wolfe to accompany him to Washington, Wolfe had decided that
Owings had waited too long to respond. Late in November Wolfe let Owings know
informally that he expected a formal response. Owings said that he had hoped
“that the matters raised in (Wolfe’s) letter had been settled to (his)
satisfaction through our joint activities, meetings and efforts since that
time.”
Owings hoped Wolfe could “see that I have attempted to carry out our agreement to the best of my ability.” First of all, he said, he met Bridwell regularly since they both served on the First Lady’s Committee on Beautification and that “if my enthusiasm to achieve our common goal lead me to discuss matters of joint concern with Mr. Bridwell without authorization, I apologize. Further,” he said, “it was my belief in speaking before the CPHA that I was speaking with proper approval. “ 32
As for the consultants, Owings responded to Wolfe’s complaints that the Team had to retain consultants and so had proceeded independently in an effort to avoid delaying the work. And regarding Rosemont decisions, Owings admitted that it “does appear that Mr. Klein was mistaken.” And “if he inadvertently attributed that decision solely to you, for this I apologize.” Wolfe was not fully satisfied with Owing’s response, so after several telephone conversations with Weese and perhaps with Owings, it was decided that Norman Klein’s duties would not involve him in any public presentations of the Team’s work in or to the Baltimore community.33 And so after Wolfe had finally achieved at least one major concession from Owings (his desire to sacrifice Klein’s freedom to participate publicly in discussions about the freeway system in Baltimore), Wolfe now gave way and responded to Owings’ “apologies.” He wrote, “on the basis of the letters furnished us, I am approving UDCA invoices for August and September.” A very tough Jerome Wolfe had relented in his effort to punish Team members or fire the whole Team. The ground already lost by Wolfe and his associates from their initial position was enormous. In the coming weeks the defeat of their compromise 3-C system seemed more and more likely.
Owings hoped Wolfe could “see that I have attempted to carry out our agreement to the best of my ability.” First of all, he said, he met Bridwell regularly since they both served on the First Lady’s Committee on Beautification and that “if my enthusiasm to achieve our common goal lead me to discuss matters of joint concern with Mr. Bridwell without authorization, I apologize. Further,” he said, “it was my belief in speaking before the CPHA that I was speaking with proper approval. “ 32
As for the consultants, Owings responded to Wolfe’s complaints that the Team had to retain consultants and so had proceeded independently in an effort to avoid delaying the work. And regarding Rosemont decisions, Owings admitted that it “does appear that Mr. Klein was mistaken.” And “if he inadvertently attributed that decision solely to you, for this I apologize.” Wolfe was not fully satisfied with Owing’s response, so after several telephone conversations with Weese and perhaps with Owings, it was decided that Norman Klein’s duties would not involve him in any public presentations of the Team’s work in or to the Baltimore community.33 And so after Wolfe had finally achieved at least one major concession from Owings (his desire to sacrifice Klein’s freedom to participate publicly in discussions about the freeway system in Baltimore), Wolfe now gave way and responded to Owings’ “apologies.” He wrote, “on the basis of the letters furnished us, I am approving UDCA invoices for August and September.” A very tough Jerome Wolfe had relented in his effort to punish Team members or fire the whole Team. The ground already lost by Wolfe and his associates from their initial position was enormous. In the coming weeks the defeat of their compromise 3-C system seemed more and more likely.
CPHA had commissioned a study of the highway proposals by John Taylor, a
Baltimore Civil Engineer. But they were not able to gain an audience for his
admirable report which recommended scraping the East/West inner Harbor bridge
of the 3-A scheme and substituting a high level North/South bridge connecting
1-83 to the Fort McHenry bypass.
On in the evening of December12, Federal Highway Administrator Bridwell and
D'Alessandro had a three-hour private dinner at which Bridwell unofficially informed the
Mayor that if the 3-C route was selected, he would personally make every effort to
guarantee 90% federal funding for the Franklin-Mulberry and Sharp Leadenhall spurs.
Three days after the meeting between Bridwell and Mayor D'Alessandro, City Council
President Donald Schaefer decided to endorse the 3-C system, the “route which will do the least amount of damage to the city.”34 Klein continued to direct the work of the team as it moved into the stages of working out design details of each segment of the freeway system which had evolved, inventing new “Joint Development” projects along the routes of the highways through Baltimore and new structure design proposals. (Figure 4)
On April 7, 1969, a complaint was filed in the DC. district court on behalf of
a group of East Baltimore residents, property owners, and business firms asking
the federal court to halt expenditure of federal funds for the 1-95 Inner
Harbor connector route which was planned in System 3A to cut through Little
Italy, Fells Point, Canton, and Highland Town sections of Baltimore.35
Two days later Maryland State Office of the National Register
of Historic Sites and Landmarks announced that the Fells Point area had been
placed on the National Part Services Register of Historic Places.On in the evening of December12, Federal Highway Administrator Bridwell and
D'Alessandro had a three-hour private dinner at which Bridwell unofficially informed the
Mayor that if the 3-C route was selected, he would personally make every effort to
guarantee 90% federal funding for the Franklin-Mulberry and Sharp Leadenhall spurs.
Three days after the meeting between Bridwell and Mayor D'Alessandro, City Council
President Donald Schaefer decided to endorse the 3-C system, the “route which will do the least amount of damage to the city.”34 Klein continued to direct the work of the team as it moved into the stages of working out design details of each segment of the freeway system which had evolved, inventing new “Joint Development” projects along the routes of the highways through Baltimore and new structure design proposals. (Figure 4)
 |
| Figure 4: Detailed landscape by Team for their proposal for the Southwest Corridor shows free dividing the CBD and Inner Harbor Tunnel |
Fells Point Fears
This meant that all federal highway officials would now be required to consider
historic values before approving any construction of an interstate highway in
the bounds of a historic district. The construction organization (in this case
the Bureau of public Roads) would have to solicit comment on this project from
the President’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation where the backup for
the decision referred to the Fells Point district as an “especially interesting
maritime district which, because of its industrial background, is one of the
few eighteenth century areas having a great variety of workingmen homes. And
the character of its townscape is the setting of small 2 1/2 story houses which
were the homes of seamen, ship carpenters, sail makers, and other artisans
involved in the port activity of the city, interspersed with occasional large,
more elaborate town houses which belonged to owners of shipyards of the sea
captains.
In the fall of 1968, Governor Agnew had endorsed the recommendations of the Maryland Historic Trust that new historic district be recommended in Baltimore for listing on the National Register. They included: Federal Hill, Fells Point, Bolton Hill, Seaton Hill, and Mount Vernon Square. The National Register office assured members of the Team that it considered these areas as approved, but that it might take some time before the official public announcements occurred. The official approval of the districts came in April, 1969.
The March, 1969 issue of Architectural Forum included along, detailed “inside dopester” article entitled “How SOM Took on the Baltimore Road Gang.”36 The article expressed pleased professional amazement at the great achievements of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill who had “dispatched a small band of urban missionaries to Baltimore” and was laced with disdain for the thoughtless design of the 1O-D system and the unreasonableness of the State Road Commission’s SRC engineers. Architects were heroes and engineers thoughtless technicians at best. The SRC engineers viewed this national publicity as salt on the wound of their recent defeats — “uncalled for and unfair.”
The article, an accolade to the SOM team members, served to split them more than they had been from their SRC engineers and from the local engineering firms which ultimately prepared detailed contract drawings for each of the new freeway segments.
In the fall of 1968, Governor Agnew had endorsed the recommendations of the Maryland Historic Trust that new historic district be recommended in Baltimore for listing on the National Register. They included: Federal Hill, Fells Point, Bolton Hill, Seaton Hill, and Mount Vernon Square. The National Register office assured members of the Team that it considered these areas as approved, but that it might take some time before the official public announcements occurred. The official approval of the districts came in April, 1969.
The March, 1969 issue of Architectural Forum included along, detailed “inside dopester” article entitled “How SOM Took on the Baltimore Road Gang.”36 The article expressed pleased professional amazement at the great achievements of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill who had “dispatched a small band of urban missionaries to Baltimore” and was laced with disdain for the thoughtless design of the 1O-D system and the unreasonableness of the State Road Commission’s SRC engineers. Architects were heroes and engineers thoughtless technicians at best. The SRC engineers viewed this national publicity as salt on the wound of their recent defeats — “uncalled for and unfair.”
The article, an accolade to the SOM team members, served to split them more than they had been from their SRC engineers and from the local engineering firms which ultimately prepared detailed contract drawings for each of the new freeway segments.
Wolfe
was clearly the villain of the four year conflict between SRC and its engineers
and Owings and his Team. His intransigence about changes in the 1O-D system
plan was obviously based largely on his fear of loosing the bribe money he and
Agnew were receiving. Agnew, in fact, was still receiving envelopes of cash
when those who surrounded Nixon in his Watergate fight, decided to investigate
the Vice President thoroughly. They decided that he would be a disaster as
President and gave him the choice between exposure of his criminal acts and
resignation from the Vice Presidency. He chose to resign.
Owings clearly was a Baltimore hero. His conceptual skills, team leadership,
political skills, determination, honesty, and patience had much to do with the
Team’s victory, which was a victory for good freeway design and attention to
environmental concerns.
Early in the 1970s, the Team began to prepare design reports for each segment
of the new, now adopted system of freeways. Walter Netsch was brought from the
Chicago SOM office to supervise this detailed design work. The reports are very
impressive, comprehensive documents dealing with the freeway alignment, its
edges including sound barriers (introduced for the first time), and
landscaping. Those who have enjoyed the Baltimore Inner Harbor driving from
Washington, DC on 1-95 for its last several miles before their arrival in
Baltimore understand the beauty and appreciate the great contributions of the
Team’s innovations.
Notes
3 Buchanan, Cohn et. al. (The Working Group). Traffic in Towns - A Study of the Long Term Problems in Urban Areas. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1963; pp. 46, 200. Buchanan uses Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s Market East plan for Philadelphia as an example of “Traffic Architecture”.
4 Appleyard, Donald, Lynch, Kevin, and Meyer, John;, The View From the Road. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1964.
5 Expressway Consultants/Baltimore Maryland, interstate Highways 70N and 95—The East-West and Southwest Expressways, Baltimore, The Consultants, October 27, 1961.
6 Owings sent copies of his notes on Rogers’ telephone call. Owings Papers Library of Congress; hereinafter OPLC.
7 Rogers, An Oral History Interview, Marconi’s Restaurant, Baltimore, Md., 28 May 1980. Cornell University Archives. Rogers ascribed the credit for the idea of employing a multi- professional/multidisciplinary team to design the Baltimore Freeway System to the work of AlA National Urban Design Committee. But Rogers personally evolved its Baltimore form. The idea also grew out of the tradition of “collaborative work, “an ideal among the architects, landscape architects, and artists who were educated in the Beaux Arts period which dominated design education until World War II. The most often cited examples were Daniel Bumham’s grand plans for the Chicago World’s Colombian Exposition. He collaborated with a large number of nationally known architectural firms and the landscape architecture firm of Frederick Law Olmstead and Associates, as well as a large number of prominent sculptors and artists.
8 Wade, Harry to Owings, 120 April 1962.
9 Klein to File (Job Memo No. 1)11 October 1966. SOM/UDCA.
10 Weese to Sampsell, 15 October 1966. OPLC. Sampsell was the Chief SOM legal counselor in firms of Isham, Lincoln and Beale in Chicago.
11 Baltimore City Planning Department. Unpublished and undated “History of Highway Planning in Baltimore” (c. 1975) p. 78
12 In the introduction to the report, there is mention of “one facility in particular (which emerged) from the previous traffic demand studies as fulfilling the primary need. This is a new intermediate circumferential. The corridors for this ring as they pertain to the southwest area include the Gwynn Falls/Hilton location and McComas Street toward/the/Fort McHenry area.” This “new intermediate circumferential” in its already defined southern alignment was to emerge as the Fort McHenry segment of 1-95 in both 3A and 3C plans. The concept was already developing in late 1967.
13 Gerard Hopkins, President Baltimore AlA chapter to Jerome B. Wolff, 17 April 1967, OPLC. Hopkins wrote that he felt that the reported compromise preserved the name of the Concept Team without preserving its substance. At this point the copies of all letters were being sent to everyone from the Mayor and Governor to local officials and newspaper editors as well as all of those directly involved in the contract discussion.
14 Draft copy of Owings speech to the Committee for Downtown, Inc. April 19, 1967. OPLC.
15 Baltimore Sun 1 July 1968.
16 interview with Rogers and others, including, Nathaniel Owings and Walter Netch, at Marconis Restaurant in Baltimore about the Urban Design Concept Team’s work in Baltimore. In recordings by K.C. Parsons May/June 1980: Archibald Rogers’ reports on Agnew’s relationship to Jerry Wolfe, SRC chair, and gives an account of Agnew’s political career. The following is based on Rogers statement: “At the [Republican] National Convention in 1968 Agnew was selected as Nixon’s running mate and of course that is an incredible story because he never completed a term [in any office]. He was governor [of Maryland] for two years, from 1966 through 1968. Before that he was county executive for a half term from 1964 to 1966; and before that he was on the Board of Zoning Appeals [for Baltimore County] for a half term from 1962 to 1964. And he was the only Republican on that Board. As everyone knows, he was U. S. Vice President for a half term, too.”
“He started out as minority member of the Board of Zoning Appeals in Baltimore County. . . . He said he took it because the Republican Committee said he was the only Republican who was willing to consider it. So since he was a lawyer, not doing very well, he stepped into the job which carried a stipend of $5,000 a year for part-time work. Then, in the middle of his term ... there was an opportunity to run for County Executive. Everybody knew that no Republican in the world would ever get elected County Executive of Baltimore County but the Democrats chose to have a factional fight at this point and they had torn each other to pieces. Meanwhile the Republicans had prevailed on Agnew to stand for the job of County Executive. Well, they said, ‘somebody has to do it. You’re a public office holder and, you know, you should do it or else. So he said, ‘okay, I’ll do it provided when I lose, not jf I lose, I get my job back as member of the Board of Appeals, that $5,000 is very important to me.’ So they said, ‘fine.’ Well, he was elected County Executive.” “Half way through that term. . . George Mahoney.. . tore the State Democratic Party to pieces. Mahoney was their nominee for the Governorship and so all the Democrats left Mahoney. . . The [Republicans].., went to Agnew, and so now Agnew [was the best candidate for] Governor, when they said ‘run for Governor,’ he said,... ‘when I lose, I get my job back on the Zoning Appeals Board.’ (Of course, he was elected.) Governor of Maryland and he led the Maryland Delegation to Miami for the Republican Convention.” ‘There, Strom Thurmond had signed up with Nixon to hold the south against Ronald Reagan provided Nixon gave Thurmond the right to become Vice President. All of this Nixon didn’t need. . . So, [when] Nixon was nominated. [He was asked ‘Who is your Vice President? Well,’ [he said,] ‘talk to Strom.’ So Strom picked some guy from Georgia... That is too far south for people like Senator Percy and Senator Matthias and [Nelson] Rockefeller. They said ‘no, no, no, we’ve got to have somebody from Pennsylvania’ who ever they [are]. Well, no, that is too far north. So they inched south. Well, someone finally said, “how about Maryland?” ‘That will satisfy us.” “Well, who do we have in Maryland?” “Oh, I don’t know, we’ve got somebody, and bless my soul there was Agnew. ‘Then after the election the Vice President .... [Agnew] [told Rogers] every word of this was true. ‘Here I am within a heartbeat of being President of this country and I’ve never lifted a finger’. He said, ‘1 am convinced that the good Lord expects me to be President.’ At this point in Rogers’ interview someone commented, “And he would have been, if he’d been honest The envelopes of money that Agnew allegedly received, some of them allegedly from Baltimore Consulting Engineering Firms, were apparently the reason behind his decision to resign the Vice Presidency and his decision to plead nolocontendre when he was charged by a Federal prosecutor for income tax irregularities. These matters came up in public again in 1981 when Wolfe testified in the Maryland Supreme court that he Agnew, and “Bud” Hammerman had split the kick-backs from consulting engineers awarded state contracts for highway design.
17 SRC Records
18 Owings to Wolf, 20 August 1968, SOM/UDCA.
19 ibid., p. 4.
20 Sun, 23 August 1968.
21 Baltimore Sun, 26 August.
22 Axelrod to Galston, September 1968. SOMJUDCA.
23 Baltimore Sun, 5 October 1968.
24 Interviews with Stewart Bryant. OPC (Owings Planning Collection), Ultimately to be placed in the Cornell University Archives.
25 Personal interview with Stewart Bryant, Ukiah, California, 13 April 1981. OPC /CUA; and Gaiston to staff of the Joint Venture, 24 September 1968, 11 September 1968, SOM-UDCA.
26 Axelrj to file, 24 September 1968, SRCR.
27 Hettleman to Owings, 13 September 1968, OPLC.
28 Nathaniel A. Owings, “Baltimore and the Fifth Dimension,” speech delivered at the Citizens Planning and Housing Association Fall Meeting held September 24, 1968, Lord Baltimore Hotel, Baltimore, Maryland, text revised October 1,1968 and drafts (apparently pre-speech), OPLC.
29 Baltjmore Sun, 25 September 1968.
30 S0M/UDCA
31 D'Alessandro to Wolfe, 6 December1968, SRCR.
32 Owings to Wolfe, 29 November 1968, OPLC.
33 Weese to Wolfe, 10 December 1968.
34 Sun, 16 December 1968.
35 Sun 11 April 1969
36 Architectural Forum, March 1969 “How SOM took on the Baltimore Road Gang”, pages 40-45.
Glossary of Acronyms and Terms Used in Text
1O-D State
Road Commission System Plan
CBD Central Business District
CPHA Citizens Planning and Housing Association
CUA Cornell University Archives
IDBC Interstate Division for Baltimore City - a sub office of SRC
MAD Movement Against Destruction
OPC Owings Planning Collection
OP/LC Owings Papers Library of Congress
PAB Planning Advisory Board
SOM Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
SOM/UDCA SOM’s developed consortium, including engineering and landscape firms: Urban Design Concept Associates
SRC State Road Commission
SRCR State Road Commission Records
Team Urban Design Concept Team
CBD Central Business District
CPHA Citizens Planning and Housing Association
CUA Cornell University Archives
IDBC Interstate Division for Baltimore City - a sub office of SRC
MAD Movement Against Destruction
OPC Owings Planning Collection
OP/LC Owings Papers Library of Congress
PAB Planning Advisory Board
SOM Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
SOM/UDCA SOM’s developed consortium, including engineering and landscape firms: Urban Design Concept Associates
SRC State Road Commission
SRCR State Road Commission Records
Team Urban Design Concept Team
