"No white man's roads through black mans' homes." ?!?!
Never-mind the 250 foot wide power line right of way, more then adequate for a 4 x 4 I-95 extension into Washington, D.C., at 4 lanes at 12@ = 48 x 2 = 96 + 4 shoulders @12 = 144 feet wide.
This right of way already was in existence by the 1950s, yet the inside the Beltway I-95 extension was instead officially routed to the south along Northwest Branch Park to the then new Prince Georges County Plaza shopping center.
That things where not what they were popularly
presented as being was something I began thinking about in 1972, at the
age of 9, traveling with my family by automobile to Washington, D.C.,
and first encounter this paradox with regard to the I-95 ‘stumps’.
Supposedly, as I was then told by a hotel employee, I-95 was stopped at the Beltway as a ‘white mans roads through black mans’ homes’.
Yet
clearly juxtapositioned with this stopped highway is its physically
clear existing right of way of a 250 foot wide power line right of way
pointing towards this Union Station’s northern B&O Metropolitan
Branch railroad industrial corridor.
I-95 ‘stub’ roadways just inside the Beltway, alongside parallel PEPCO right of way.
That was some
‘white mans road through black man’s home’ with its wide open 250 foot
wide PEPCO power line right of way extending to some 1600 feet from the
DC line at New Hampshire Avenue, before continuing another 1600 feet to
connect with the B&O Railroad route.
Un-built inside the Beltway & D.C. I-95 via the PEPCO-B&O RR Route,
National Archives II at right
This is THE logical route for inside the Beltway I-95, for its use of existing right of way and for its proximity to New Hampshire Avenue and by extension the east west Missouri Avenue providing superior serviceability into northern Washington, D.C..
As
planned by 1973, this route for inside the Beltway I-95 would have
taken about 0 dwellings in Maryland, and clusters of 23 and 5 near the
north side of New Hampshire Avenue, just inside D.C. flanking the open
field of the Masonic Eastern Star Home at 6000 New Hampshire Avenue, and
then another 34 at the western edge of Brookland.
The
numbers are so low because of the extensive re-use of existing
corridors and right of ways- namely the PEPCO right of way and the
B&O Metropolitan Brach RR corridor with its lightly developed
industrial strip providing the space to grade an 8 lane freeway, with
little need to displace residential dwellings- with that for the I-95
segment of the B&O North Central Freeway limited to 34, as per a
1970 DCDPW design revision reducing it from the 69 of the 1966 design.
Completing
I-95 all the way from its ‘stumps’ at the Beltway to New York Avenue,
as designed by 1973 would have displaced a total of some 57 dwellings- a
figure comparable to that taken for constructing the – mile long Inter
Counter Connector – miles to the north in Maryland, or the
reconstruction of the I-95/I-495 Beltway interchange in Virginia – while
serving some 220,000 vehicles of people daily.
In contrast to the 1973 version which would have displaced some 57, the 1960 version would have displaced some 1,095 alone.
Despite the concern over displacing homes, the U.S. and D.C. government's just permitted the construction of 111 residential dwellings , called "the Hampshires" upon the Masonic Eastern Star Home field upon the connecting segment between the southern end of the commercial strip in Maryland at the power-line's southern end, and the B&O corridor within D.C.
In contrast to the 1973 version which would have displaced some 57, the 1960 version would have displaced some 1,095 alone.
Despite the concern over displacing homes, the U.S. and D.C. government's just permitted the construction of 111 residential dwellings , called "the Hampshires" upon the Masonic Eastern Star Home field upon the connecting segment between the southern end of the commercial strip in Maryland at the power-line's southern end, and the B&O corridor within D.C.
Completing
its continuations to the portions of the Washington, D.C. that were
built – the I-95 North Leg East connecting to the I-95 Center Leg, and
the I-295 East Leg connecting to the SE Freeway – as designed by 1971
would have respectively displaced 600+ and 172 dwellings.
This is where the most dwellings would have been torn down (and replaced with new housing).
Yet
the biggest protests against “white mans roads through black mans
homes” occurred at the site of the proposed I-266 Three Sisters Bridge
alongside Georgetown University (that would have displaced 0 dwellings),
and at the area of the B&O Route I-95 North Central Freeway in
Brookland alongside Catholic University of America, that would have
displaced 34 as per the 1970s and later planning, or 69 as per the 1966
plan.
Meanwhile, such issues of mitigation as
the increasing use of the existing corridors – earlier planning took far
more of a lets cut an all new swath through dwellings and parklands –
and that of cut and cover tunneling, containing noise and pollution
while reclaiming surface land for other uses, were oddly “forgotten.”
(As
a historian of the planning of Washington, D.C.’s – discuss matter of
finding nothing about the 1966 plan’s proposal to cover the I-95 North
Central Freeway alongside the main campus of Catholic University of
America, nor any objection when the cover was deleted.)
Things
took on a clearly Hegelian dialectics turn by the mid 1960s with the
political undermining of the B&O route that had been proposed by the
November 1, 1962 Kennedy Administration report.
