Book on building Pulaski Skyway is topic for rotunda talk tonight

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Author Steven Hart will talk about his book, "The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Superhighway," tonight from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Theodore Conrad Rotunda at the Brennan Courthouse at 583 Newark Ave., Jersey City.

The book is a sweeping investigative look at the building of the Pulaski Skyway. The evening will include a presentation by the author as well as a signing and reception.

Tickets for the event are $40 each and include a copy of the book. For tickets and to RSVP please call Andrea at 201-333-5700, Ext. 537.

All proceeds from "The Last Three Miles" event benefit WomenRising Inc., a community-based organization for women in Hudson County.

Through social services, economic development, affordable housing development and advocacy, WomenRising supports women and their families in their efforts to achieve self-sufficiency, and live safe, fulfilling and productive lives.

Parking is free, the facility is handicap accessible and assisted listening devices are available for the hearing impaired.

For more information about WomenRising, see www.womenrising.org.

JOURNAL STAFF

Let it be told: It was his way or the Skyway

Sunday, June 17, 2007
By JIM BECKERMAN
RECORD COLUMNIST


The three-mile ribbon of steel, rivets and concrete known as the Pulaski Skyway is now a minor Jersey celebrity -- thanks to its appearance at the start of each "Sopranos" episode.

In the past it's done other walk-ons: in the 1938 Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast (Martian machines bellied up to it) and in Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 thriller "Shadow of a Doubt" (an establishing shot of North Jersey).


Now it's the star of its own tale of intrigue.

"The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder and the Construction of America's First Superhighway" (New Press) tells a story as harrowingly as Hitchcock, as dramatically as Welles. And at its center is a boss who makes Tony Soprano look like a Sunday school teacher.

"This is a story that has everything," says author Steven Hart, a Hasbrouck Heights native who grew up in Saddle Brook and is now a Middlesex County resident.

"It has political skullduggery," he says. "It has murder and mayhem. It has traffic engineering. Everything you want from a good story."ON THE WEB

stevenhartsite.wordpress.com


Hart's saga of the construction of the Pulaski Skyway, his first published book, was partly inspired by years of working in Hoboken (he's a reporter for a business magazine).

Driving to work on the Skyway, he had occasion to ponder what many other motorists have wondered before and since: Who designed this crazy thing? Why is it so narrow and steep? Why are there no shoulders? Why do access ramps open – illogically, dangerously – in the center of the roadway?

"It's equal parts roller coaster and demolition derby," says Hart, 49. "I started my research with the idea, 'I'm going to find the nut cases who designed this thing.' What I ended up realizing is that this is the work of some of the most talented and visionary engineers of their time."

At the center of the story is the chief booster of the Skyway, Frank Hague (1876-1956), the Jersey City mayor whose name was once a byword for ham-fisted, lead-pipe machine politics. There were many in the 1930s who considered him America's bush-league Mussolini.

"He tapped phones, he opened mail," Hart says. "Anyone who criticized him was subject to any number of penalties, ranging from having his property tax valuation quadrupled overnight, to getting beaten up by his police."

When Life magazine published an unfavorable profile of the mayor in 1939, Hague's police made sure no Jersey City newsstands carried the issue.

His political clout even intimidated FDR, says Hart. The president despised Hague, but needed his votes; he allowed the mayor to skim off Works Progress Administration projects that enabled Hague's Hudson County Democratic machine to survive the Depression.

Hague was a Jersey City-born brawler who had risen from a long-vanished Irish slum neighborhood called "The Horseshoe."

"He was a very intimidating guy, his rages were legendary," Hart says. "He was not a guy you ever wanted to be on the wrong side of."

Named -- after the fact -- for Revolutionary War hero General Casimir Pulaski, the "highway of the future" was meant to ease the traffic congestion in Jersey City caused in 1926 by the opening of the Holland Tunnel.

Both cars and roads were still in their infancy in the late 1920s. There were no precedents for the proposed "superhighway" (itself a new word); railroad infrastructure was the only model. Many of the Skyway's shortcomings can be traced to the fact that it was designed by a railroad engineer, Fred Lavis.

"They didn't take account of the safety concerns of highway design, because highway design did not really exist," Hart says.

Eight people were killed in the first nine months after the Skyway's opening in 1932 – testament to its unfortunate design. But the scandal of the Skyway's layout paled beside the scandal of its construction.

"The War of the Meadowlands" is the name newspapers gave to the pitched battle between the union forces, backed by Hague enemy Teddy Brandle, and the anti-union forces, backed by Hague. More than one of the 14 people who died during the construction of the $21 million Skyway were the victims of labor violence.

Hague deserves wider recognition today, Hart believes – if only because he makes today's dirty politicians seem like amateurs.

"He's one of the key players of 20th-century American politics," Hart says. "If you're interested in politics, especially Jersey politics, he looms."

As for the Skyway, the highway of the future that became obsolete the day it opened, it also looms -- beautiful in an ugly way, inefficient and dangerous, but still necessary to traffic in North Jersey. Plans were floated this year in Trenton to replace it. New Jerseyans had better not hold their breath, Hart says.

"The last estimate I saw for replacing the Skyway started at about a billion dollars," he says. "That thing is not going away any time soon."


Hart will speak and sign books at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Barnes & Noble, 465 River Road, Edgewater; 201-943-6130.

E-mail: beckerman@northjersey.com