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Charming_Wulf t1_itw5u8w wrote

Reply to comment by pk10534 in Envisioned refurbished harbor (circa 1950’s, via City Archives) by Reeyuuk

You are correct, interstates didn't tear neighborhoods in half. The city interstates just outright deleted neighborhoods. Even in this rendering you can see Fed Hill and Little Italy are erased. And if this picture shows the bridge for originally planned i-95 route, then Fells Point and Canton are also fully deleted. The designing engineer might not be racist or look down upon working class, but the local politicians creating the parameters for the engineer definitely were.

Also this particular i-95 possibility was impactful enough to launch the political career of Senator Mikulski. She made her first big play as community organizer fighting this particular design. Though she saved those neighborhoods, much of i-95s route east of Baltimore deleted other neighborhood's.

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pk10534 t1_itw6o16 wrote

Oh yeah, this particular highway might have totally destroyed neighborhoods in this instance. My answer was more of just a general take on why highways at that time were sometimes aligned on the water. I am very, very glad it did not get built lol. The damage the "highway to nowhere" caused the west side is a great example of why highways are so harmful. I wish the city had built out its metro network like DC did, who knows where we'd be today

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Charming_Wulf t1_itw7kff wrote

It saddened me when I learned that there was originally supposed a second north-south subway line in Baltimore. Transit funding drying up and Anne Arundel County racists (shocked Pikachu) helped to kill that line though.

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pk10534 t1_itw8fz3 wrote

Oh it’s painful to read what AA county residents said about what would happen if public transit were completed. I mean just straight up blatant racism.

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mlorusso4 t1_itw8xgr wrote

Wait I’m confused. Fed hill is still clearly there and still a park. Ya you lose the volleyball courts to that weird building with its own highway exit and you lose the unobstructed view of the harbor to the highway, but you gain that small park where the ritz Carlton is now. And from what I can tell this rendering doesn’t show what becomes of the little Italy

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Scrilla_Gorilla_ t1_itwdt2p wrote

When people refer to Fed Hill generally they mean the neighborhood, not the park. Assuming the highway doesn't turn dramatically as soon as it gets off the rendering it would definitely go through Little Italy, and would also cut off almost the entire northern third of Fed Hill.

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DfcukinLite t1_itwl6bz wrote

Otterbein was demolished then and they rebuilt it in its current form once the highway was cancelled. Same with that community off the square in canton

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ppw23 t1_itwuhto wrote

I think Little Italy would have been just fine. Pretty sure Tommy DeAlesandro (Mayor) during that period lived in Little Italy. Nancy Pelosi’s father, her brother also served as Mayor in the 60’s. The area was rock solid. It was one of the few neighborhoods that didn’t have so much as a broken window during the riots which destroyed much of the city.

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