Since state legislators announced the plan to build Rte. 128 in 1949, the highway once called the "Road to Nowhere" now has a more impressive "High Technology Highway" moniker.
The idea to build the country’s first beltway originated before World War II as Massachusetts’s 1938 Master Highway Plan. Because of the war, however, the idea wasn’t revisited until 1948.
In 1948, Paul Andrew Dever was elected governor of Massachusetts, replacing Robert F. Bradford, and William F. Callahan served as commissioner of the Department of Public Works.
The State House revealed plans for the new Rte. 128 in 1949 without mentioning its commercial potential, but many top firms immediately recognized the profitability of the land around the highway.
At the time, many west suburban communities were looking to displace the heavy traffic from their residential and business environments. Waltham and Lexington led a campaign of 14 communities hoping to obtain priority for the new highway.
To expedite the building of the beltway, the state assigned construction of different segments to different contractors. The land on which the highway was built was originally pig farms, and since the road only connected farmland some were skeptical of its value.
The western stretch of the beltway was completed in 1951.
In 1952, the City of Waltham adopted Limited Commercial Zoning, which stipulated the need to have well-landscaped buildings as well as density requirements. As a result, Rte. 128 became the ideal location for complexes of light manufacture, research, office parks and hotels.
In 1951, before the highway had been completed, Edwin Land of Polaroid recognized 128 as the perfect location for his company because of its convenience for employees commuting from surrounding towns. Polaroid became Waltham’s largest employer.
Soon, other high-tech companies, such as Clevite, GTE Sylvania, Hewlett Packard, Mobil, Raytheon and R.M. Bradley, followed Polaroid’s lead.
Between 1951 and 1959, 227 businesses were employing 28,000 people along Rte. 128. By the 1960s and 1970s, an acre of land was selling for 10 times the price it was 1952.
National companies opened locations in the office parks, though tracts were also available to small industrial firms.
In 1954 and 1955, Cabot, Cabot and Forbes built the Industrial Park and the Research and Development Park, where two Sylvania facilities opened first. By 1960, 30 firms had chosen those sites, and by 1984, more than 200 companies representing more than 20,000 employees were located there.
By that time, property valuation had exceeded $1 billion, and there was barely any land left for development.
In 1973, there were 1,212 companies along Rte. 128. Of the seven cities and 23 towns along the highway, Waltham was the most densely developed, with 186 separate companies and divisions.
During the recession of the 1970s, however, Waltham was severely affected as thousands of engineers and technicians lost their jobs.
Overall, the state benefited from the number of jobs created by Rte. 128. When President Ronald Reagan increased national defense spending in the 1980s, large amounts of money were funneled into Waltham’s research and manufacturing specialists.
In addition to the changes in Waltham’s workforce that Rte. 128 created, the highway influenced lifestyle changes.
Initially, Rte. 128 was designed to accommodate 15,000 cars per day. But by 1958, when the last segment was completed, there were often 50,000 cars traveling on it daily.
As a result, shopping centers and restaurant chains sprung up in the towns along the highway. Also, people began to rely more on cars to commute to work at an office or industrial park.
Information for this story was taken from "Waltham Rediscovered," the Centennial Edition of the News Tribune of Waltham, and "Lessons from Boston’s High Tech Community, Route 128."
WALTHAM —
