Alert “06880” reader David Meth sent along info about an interesting show airing tomorrow night on PBS.
“10 Streets That Changed America” looks at some very different roads, from coast to coast, and from colonial days to 2018. It “explores the ways real estate, technology, and travel alter ways we get around, and in turn, shape modern life.”
Right there — among Broadway and Wilshire Boulevard — is the Post Road.
Opened in 1673, the New York to Boston route dramatically cut the time of moving people, goods and information. 100 years later, Ben Franklin helped it become “an even more efficient, economical means of transporting ideas and publications, just in time to ferment the debate and dialogue that fed the American Revolution.”
That was then …
The show’s website promises to highlight “the importance of infrastructure, and how today’s planners are, in many ways, coming full circle in their efforts to return many of the country’s great roads to walkable, pedestrian thoroughfares.”
I guess the key word in that sentence is “many.”
Not “all.”
(“10 Streets That Changed America” airs tomorrow — Tuesday, July 10 — at 8 p.m. on Channel 13. Click here for more information.)
… this is now.
Very informative and interedi.
Too bad that current view wasn’t looking east from the hill. My Uncle would tell stories of how, in the early ’50’s, the Post Rd. was clogged with trucks going up and down the coast. It was not unusual to see heavily laden trucks fail to stop at the bottom of the hill and cause accidents. One reason why there was often a traffic officer stationed there.
The Post Road is not horrible everywhere. From Stonington to the Pawcatuck River (the boundary of CT and RI) it’s a nice little black-top road with nice views of trees, fields, forests, water, homes, modest businesses, and Stonington High School.