Building the highway
The highway was built in several stages, beginning at Cape Ann in the 1930s and ending with the Wellesley to Braintree section in 1959. (Building Route 128 contains over 150 photographs of construction, each finely captioned to explain location, methods, and effects of the highway's construction)
A Lynnfield resident, Warren Falls, was a
restless college
graduate with a camera
when the new, divided highway was being
built through
his home town. He took
many photographs in the book, including
this image of
the Route 1 overpass.
South of Boston, Route 1 passes over
Route 128 again.
Here is
the construction of the overpass in 1955.
Here in April of 1951, a worker mans a
drill rig on a
rocky ledge in
Reading as construction proceeds in the
background on
the
overpass that will carry the new highway
over Main Street
(Route 28).
The finished product. Many of the
original Route
128 bridges
(like the one for the Route 1 overpass)
were built of
stone,
and featured stunning art deco designs.