Author Description

"The first time I came into Baltimore on Route 40, I was puzzled by the destruction along nearly a mile and a half of that highway. Many of Baltimore’s iconic row houses, with their beautiful marble steps, were being torn down. But wasn’t there a shortage of housing in inner cities? I soon learned that the destruction was to make way for a new superhighway--an effort to do away with the traffic lights on Route 40. It also appeared that the traditional houses—people’s homes--were to be replaced by sterile hi-rise apartments. This just did not seem right--not then and not now. This was and is my personal perspective... What follows are my photographs from the fall of 1968. I have included many photos of similar scenes in the effort to provide an opportunity for those who may have lived there to see familiar buildings that have since disappeared. I have not attempted to write a history of what happened. I also can’t pretend to understand the full ramifications of the destruction of this neighborhood, or the subsequent abandonment of the highway’s construction, leading it to become known locally as the Highway To Nowhere"--