Stop the Road is now on sale through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Vacant, boarded houses in Fells Point, 1975
In praise of Stop the Road:
Read Evans Paull’s “Stop the Road,” a superbly detailed account… You’ll be cheered by the hard work, resiliency, and commitment of so many citizens of all races, ethnicities, and incomes.
J. Randall Evans, former Secretary, Maryland Department of Economic & Employment Development
Ev Paull masterfully documents the untold story… highlighting individual accounts of “ordinary people doing extraordinary things…”
William F. Zorzi, former journalist, The Baltimore Sun and Writer, The Wire and We Own This City
Evans Paull has found many of these courageous people and made their ‘highway stories’ a compelling human history of the challenges that faced post-war urban America.”
Mark Reutter, Senior Editor, Baltimore Brew and author, Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might.
Paull’s marvelously detailed work provides an instructive example of how different groups, race, ethnicity, and education came together for a common goal…
Philip J. Merrill, Co-founder & EOA, Nanny Jack and Company, LLC and author, Old West Baltimore (Images of America)
Stop the Road is an engrossing saga of Baltimore… History, so significant for our city, enlivened by in person storytelling...
M.J. (“Jay”) Brodie, former Baltimore Housing Commissioner and President of Baltimore Development Corporation.
I highly recommend it… Thoroughly researched and well chronicled… Evans Paull does an amazing job of filling in the behind-the-scenes machinations….
Jody Landers, former Baltimore City Councilperson, and Executive Vice President of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors
“Stop the Road” is a compelling web of personal stories. Paull’s wonderful writing paints a detailed picture of the decades long struggle…
Bob Perciasepe, former Maryland Secretary of Environment and U.S. EPA Deputy Administrator
“Stop the Road” is a great read about Baltimore’s efforts to keep highways from plowing through neighborhoods…I am going to put on my shelf next to Robert Caro’s “Powerbroker.”
Janet-Marie Smith, former Vice President of Planning and Development, Baltimore Orioles
just released!
Stop the Road, stories from the trenches of Baltimore’s Road Wars
by Evans Paull
The grass roots movement that changed Baltimore, forever
Upheaval: how did these no-name activists and outsiders overthrow the city’s economic/political establishment?
Intrigue: did Barbara Mikulski really stop the highway through Fells Point?
Untold story: why was the Highway to Nowhere built?
Mystery: why were the engineers hellbent on the highway plan that would have destroyed the waterfront?
Equity and justice: was Baltimore guilty of using highways for “Negro removal?”
Unsung heroes: who were these ordinary folks who saved Baltimore from its own leadership?
Irony: Did former Governor and Vice President Agnew (a highway supporter) unwittingly aid the fight to save Fell’s Point because of graft-related IOU’s?
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Introduction to Stop the Road
During a visit to her former neighborhood in 1988, Mercedes Stevens succinctly summed up the aftermath of the Baltimore’s 40-year battle over Interstate Highways. She said, “If the Expressway had been built, you’d say ‘well, who wants to live there anyway?’” Stevens was talking about her family’s former home on South Decker Street in Canton, but she could have been talking about Montgomery Street in South Baltimore, William Street in Federal Hill, Ellamont Street in Rosemont, Aliceanna Street in Harbor East, or Lancaster Street in Fells Point.
That Baltimore is not saddled with expressways barging their way through these historic waterfront communities is a testament to those operating outside of the power structure, a rare victory of the outsiders…
“If you think about the things that have really changed the face of Baltimore as we know it today, to me there is nothing more important than the road wars.”
Bill Struever, Baltimore developer and urban strategist
The Anatomy of a Bad Decision
The African American Heroes of Baltimore’s Road Wars
Federal Hill and the Inner Harbor – the Conquistadors of Concrete vs. the Platitudeness Planners
See all posts on the blog page