Posted February 26, 200619 yr this thread is about historic woodbury and one of america's oldest and most revered highways, the merritt parkway. woodbury is a small burg in litchfield county & has a lot of antique stores and several striking olde new englandy churches. marilyn monroe lived there and....well that's all i got. heh - sorry! thats better ye olde graveyard is next to the church part of a famous connecticut running stone fence road fans are fanatic about the deco era merritt parkway I-95 runs parallel to it to the south, but that is for the proletariat muffy, bif & the bourgeoisie would use the merritt! some info: http://www.merrittparkway.org/history.htm On April 17, 1991, the Merritt Parkway was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. As one of the only roads listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Merritt Parkway boasts a distinction usually reserved for buildings or battlefields. merritt brochure The objective was not to construct a road for new commuters, but one for the pleasure and recreation of those already living in Fairfield County. <--- yeah right. nice try tho - heh! construction plenty 'o stones to use in connecticut THE MERRITT PARKWAY OPENS: The first 17.5-mile-long section of the Merritt Parkway between the New York-Connecticut border to Norwalk opened to the public on June 29, 1938. On September 2, 1940, the remaining 20 miles between Norwalk and Milford opened, completing a high-speed, limited-access parkway from the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge to New Haven County. The parkway was completed at a cost of $22.7 million, near the low end of Commissioner MacDonald's 1935 cost estimate. The opening of the parkway was acclaimed by the local press, as evidenced by this editorial appearing in The Bridgeport Post: One can build a concrete highway anywhere. But the Merritt Parkway is different. More than any "Futurama" at the World's Fair, more than any dream of the futuristic designers, it shows what the highway of the future should look like: a highway where the eye is filled with beauty and the mind with peace as the car purrs safely along. first toll collected On June 21, 1939, tolls were added to the Merritt Parkway, not to pay for its own upkeep (a common misconception) but instead to finance an extension to Hartford. The toll barriers spanned the through traffic lanes, meaning all traffic would stop, pay a dime, and continue; compare this to the Massachusetts Turnpike, where motorists get a ticket at an entrance ramp and pay a calculated toll where they exit. The tolls were a success: by the late 1940s, a combination of four-lane highways carried motorists from Greenwich, and the Merritt Parkway, to Hartford. The safety problems with this setup were emphasized in a multiple fatality accident in 1983, where a runaway truck struck several cars stopped at a tollgate. In the aftermath, the state worked to remove all tolls, and on June 25, 1988, tolls were removed from the Merritt and Wilbur Cross parkways. note several times the "doomsday" proposal for the Merritt Parkway has surfaced: adding travel lanes in each direction, which would require uprooting miles of landscaping and reconstructing every bridge along the route. However, this has not happened to date, and the Parkway remains at its original four lanes. The parkway is best known for its bridges; all 68 of them have uniquely designed masonwork and ornamentation. Counter to the misconception that each bridge is the work of a different artist, all were designed by George Dunkelberger. Bruce Radde's "The Merritt Parkway," published in 1993, includes photos of nearly all of them. cute old fashioned gas stations thats the schist-nit *** now thats how to drive thru connecticut in style***
February 26, 200619 yr ooh..Petyon Place! The book on the Merrit Parkway is availble via Ohiolink, for those who are college students or have a community borrowers card.
February 26, 200619 yr ^haha, yeah! jeff don't forget the stepford wives too! and then there is david letterman & his many speeding tickets..... The Merritt Parkway, at one time on David Letterman's commute, has appeared in his Top Ten lists: #3 Sign Your Judge is Bored: His eyes just seem to glaze over when you try to explain to him why you were going 82 mph on the Merritt Parkway. (Oct. 26, 1994) #3 Little Known Provisions in President Clinton's Crime Bill: No speed limit on Merritt Parkway for late night talk show hosts (Aug. 17, 1994) #6 Reason It Took [driver] 20 Years To Win The Daytona 500 New strategy: pretend I'm Dave driving home on the Merritt Parkway. (Feb. 16, 1998)
February 27, 200619 yr Great stuff! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
February 27, 200619 yr When I saw that church, it reminded me a lot of the house in Beetle Juice :-D I'm sure there are tons of buildings like it New England. http://minadream.com/timburton/images/Beetlejuice/Pic1.jpg
Create an account or sign in to comment