NEW YORK TIMES Journalist - STEVEN HART on his book about the Pulaski Skyway
Come hear award winning New York Times journalist Steven Hart talk about his latest book, The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America’s Superhighway.
At the dawn of America’s love affair with the automobile, cars and trucks leaving the nation’s largest city were unceremoniously dumped out of the western end of the Holland Tunnel onto local roads wending their way through the New Jersey Meadowlands.
Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague—dictator of the Hudson County political machine and a national political player—was a prime mover behind the building of the country’s first “superhighway,” designed to connect the hub of New York City to the United States of America. Hague’s nemesis in this undertaking was union boss Teddy Brandle, and construction of the last three miles of Route 25, later dubbed the Pulaski Skyway, marked an epic battle between big labor and big politics, culminating in a murder and the creation of a motorway so flawed it soon became known as “Death Avenue” –now appropriately featured in the opening sequence of the hit HBO series The Sopranos.
Mr. Hart will be speaking at the Kearny Public Library, 318 Kearny Ave on Wednesday evening, March 12 at 7 p.m. All are invited. Limited copies of Mr. Hart’s book will be available for circulation at the Main Library. For further information please contact Kerry Kosick at the Library at 201-998-2666
