BALTIMORE—A ragtag band of community activists, environmentalists and preservationists won three major expressway battles, eliminated two highways and rerouted a third – thereby saving the waterfront that became the bedrock of Baltimore’s later revival. However, other highways were built– reflecting racial inequities and discriminatory practices deeply embedded in the City’s history.
Veteran city planner and national urban development expert, E. Evans Paull chronicles all this and more in Stop the Road: Stories from the Trenches of Baltimore’s Road Wars (October 1, 2022, Boyle & Dalton, 353 pages, hard copy $29.99: paperback:$19.99; e-book: $9.99, ISBN 978-1-6337-644-1).
“The Road Wars were a determinant of what Baltimore looks like today,” explains Paull, who initially heard about the highway controversies while working in the mid-1970s and felt compelled to write the “untold story” after retiring in 2017. “You would have to go back to the building of the B&O Railroad to find another issue that has had a more profound impact on Baltimore City and its neighborhoods.”
Geared to the human side of Baltimore’s history, Stop the Roadgains depth from 55interviews of the “road warriors” who fought the highway battle.The book showcases their stories, as Paull unravels this improbable victory of the powerless and the outsiders over the insiders and the powerful, thereby saving Federal Hill, Harbor East, Fells Point and Canton from the wrecking ball and economic catastrophe.
Probing and exposing Baltimore in unflinching detail, the book cites the infamous Harlem Park“Highway to Nowhere,” I-395 through Sharp-Leadenhalland East-West Expressway through Rosemontas examples of using highways for “Negro removal” and the low regard for fully functioning Black communities. These are issues that “need to be explored and take their place in this country’s much needed reckoning over race,” according to Paull.
While depicting the grassroots movements surrounding the highway battle, Stop the Road features extensive coverage and insight into two towering political figures: William Donald Schaefer and Barbara Ann Mikulski.
- “Stop the Road is an engrossing saga of Baltimore, not just because the events depicted are so significant for our city, but also because the history is enlivened by in person storytelling.”
M. J. (“Jay”) Brodie, former Baltimore Housing Commissioner and Baltimore Development Corporation president
- “Ev Paull masterfully documents the untold story of plans for a series of superhighways that changed the face of Baltimore over the last 80 years, taking readers through the many twists and turns, and buttressing his research with interviews from both prominent and all-but-forgotten participants, the opponents and advocates.”
William F. Zorzi, former journalist, The Baltimore Sun and writer, The Wire and We Own This City
- “Paull’s surgical dissection of the 40-year battle produces a book that is essential for understanding today’s Baltimore—and the many other American cities which experienced similar highway wars.”
Antero Pietila, author of Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City
Stop the Road will be available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and in area bookstores. To learn more, visit the Stop the Road website or follow on Facebook.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Northwest Baltimore resident E. Evans Paull spent 45 years as a city planner working in Baltimore and nationally on urban redevelopment issues. He began his career in the Baltimore City Department of Planning as a generalist planner before specializing in the redevelopment of brownfields.
After starting and managing Baltimore’s Brownfields Initiative, he tackled these same issues at a national level, working first for Northeast-Midwest Institute before becoming director of the National Brownfields Coalition and finally running his consulting business, Redevelopment Economics. Many of his published articles and papers still appear on the Redevelopment Economics website.
Paull has won several awards, including: Brownfields Leadership Award, Phoenix Award (for brownfields redevelopment), Governor’s Smart Growth Award and Professional Achievement in Economic Development Award from the Maryland Chapter American Planning Association.
