The Jersey City Independent "

photo by Steven Hart

“When it opened in 1932, in a Thanksgiving Day gala, the Skyway was hailed as a marvel of engineering,” writes Steven Hart in the introduction to his 2007 book The Last Three Miles. “Much of what was said back then remains true today — the Pulaski Skyway is a milestone in the early history of America’s effort to cope with the rise of the automobile. It is also a monument to failure.”

Hart’s fascinating book — subtitled “Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America’s First Superhighway” — looks at the backstory of the Skyway’s construction and the mark the iconic elevated highway left both on Jersey City and on the region as a whole.

The 51-year-old journalist and former Jersey City resident recently took some time to talk with JCI via email about the Skyway, Frank Hague, organized labor and transportation planning.

Many people associate the Skyway with the New Deal and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) — is that correct?

The Skyway was not a WPA project — it was the tail end of the Route One extension project begun in the mid-1920s in response to the imminent opening of the Holland Tunnel. The extension was designed to carry traffic from the Holland Tunnel across the Meadowlands, then to Newark and Elizabeth. Various political delays made the Skyway the final link in the extension. The Skyway construction began in 1930 and was completed in 1932 before FDR took office.

Can you explain how Mayor Hague was able to get the project built?

The Route One extension was a state-funded project. Hague was a strenuous advocate for the project since he, like anyone else with a speck of foresight, could see what would happen when millions of vehicles started pouring from the Holland Tunnel and into the heart of Jersey City. He gave his personal blessing to the appointment of Fred Lavis as chief designer and gave speeches to support the project on the floor of the state legislature. The total project cost was $40 million, about half of which was abosrbed by the Skyway.

The Skyway, incidentally, did not get its name until 1933 — a year after it opened. Until then, it was known as the Meadowlands Viaduct, the Diagonal Highway or Route 25.

What other New Deal projects was Hague able to get done in Jersey City?

The best known WPA project in Jersey City would be Roosevelt Stadium, which was built at Droyers Point and opened in 1937. (Though the waterfront stadium was supposed to be named Veterans’ Memorial Stadium, Hague named it after FDR.)

In recognition of Hague’s political clout, FDR allowed the mayor to treat all WPA jobs in Hudson County as patronage positions, and Hague’s machine skimmed off the salaries of every county WPA worker. So you could say anyone descended from one of those workers is also a living memorial to the WPA.

Can you talk a little more about Hague’s relationship with FDR? Did FDR respect Hague or merely need him? How did Hague feel about FDR?

FDR personally despised Hague, partly because he considered bosses of Hague’s stripe to be corrupt predators, and partly because Hague did his best to keep FDR from winning the Democratic presidential nomination during the 1932 primary and the national convention in Chicago. Both men, however, were pragmatists.

Hague backed Al Smith, but when FDR took the nomination Hague knew he had to mend fences, which he did by pledging his full support and arranging a huge rally in Sea Girt for the official launch of FDR’s presidential campaign.

FDR knew he needed Hague in his corner to ensure New Jersey’s Democratic vote, so he he allowed the WPA jobs to be treated as patronage and even looked the other way when Hague’s people were caught opening the mail of suspected labor organizers in the 1930s — a felony.

FDR never moved openly against Hague, but he did encourage the gubernatorial candidacy of reformer Charles Edison and helped gull Hague into giving his support as well. When Edison made his first moves against Hague, he was sent running by Mary Teresa Norton, one of the first women to enter the legislature, whose career had been sponsored by Hague. She stood up in Congress and called Edison every bad name a polite Irish-Catholic lady could say in that venue. The next day, FDR sent her a friendly note, just to make it clear he had no ill will towards Hague.

You argue in your book that the Pulaski Skyway was a sort of turning point in terms of the nation’s transportation priorities. Why’s that?

As the first superhighway project in America (a designation given by the engineers who planned and designed the project), the Route One extension and the Skyway represent the first steps toward coping with the skyrocketing number of automobiles on American roads. It is thus a landmark in the 20th century transformation of America by the automobile. Its construction also marked a turning point for Frank Hague, since it sparked a labor war that he used to launch an all-out crusade against labor organizations. The years following the Skyway labor war were the time when Hague began to justify some of the bad things that were said about him.

Can you tell me a little more about that labor war? What sparked it and how did Hague fit into all of it?

Hague had been pretty much a friend of labor throughout the 1920s — for example, Jersey City police had turned back strikebreakers, something unheard of at the time. Much of his labor support came through Theodore “Teddy” Brandle, who had brought all of North Jersey’s construction and ironworker locals under his control. In return for guaranteeing labor’s endorsement for Hague and his candidates, Brandle was given a free hand to control hirings and firings on all Hudson County construction projects. Brandle also co-founded a bond company with Joseph Hurley, a Hudson County assemblyman, and fees from state construction contracts poured through his office. Brandle also founded the Labor National Bank and built its headquarters in Journal Square.

The official start of their falling out was a labor dispute during the construction of a generator building at the Jersey City Medical Center complex — the contactor used union men, but didn’t hire them through Brandle. The dispute grew violent and Hague had to step in by paying off the contractor, then going to the freeholder board for more money to complete the project. But Hague was already moving into an openly anti-labor stance, chiefly because he thought Jersey City’s high tax rates were chasing away employers — he tried to guarantee labor peace as an enticement to industry.

The Skyway project was built by four companies, all of them members of the ferociously anti-union National Erectors’ Association, and when Brandle went to war against them he was hugely overmatched. The firms hired goons to guard the work sites, and there were numerous scuffles with Brandle’s pickets. One labor picketer was shot in the back and partially paralyzed. Early in 1932, a carload of scabs bound for the Kearny worksite was attacked by men with crowbars and bats; one of the non-union workers suffered a fractured skull and died. Hague used the death to launch an all-out war against Brandle and, later, all unions.

What other attacks did Hague launch on organized labor? Were they tied into his crusade against communists?

Hague couched his anti-union campaign in the language of anti-communism, and in his mind the two causes were pretty much the same. His chief method was to get locals declared corrupt and then placed under receiverships that drained their finances and scattered their membership. Organziers were routinely arrested and beaten by the city police, and denied the use of rental space for their rallies.

Back to transportation planning. If the Skyway was one turning point, do you think that we might be at — or close to — another point in our history where there could be another turning point in transportation priorities? If so, what do you think it will — or should — look like?

We can only hope that short-sighted thinking will finally give way to an expanded and improved mass transit network involving upgraded and improved railways.

Do you see similarities between the climate now — especially in Jersey City and Hudson County — and the climate in the 1920s and 1930s when the Skyway was being built?

Obama, of course, inherits an economy hollowed out by the disastrous fiscal practices of his predecessor. The sense of renewal among labor unions is another significant similarity. It’s an interesting coincidence that our current mini-depression was predated by the arrival of revisionist ideologues like Amity Shlaes who are trying to convince people that government spending intensified the Great Depression rather than bringing it to heel.

Overall, do you think the Skyway changed Jersey City for the better or for the worse?

Probably for the worse, since its design flaws quickly returned truck traffic to local Meadowlands roads and encouraged the blighted development we now see in South Kearny. It’s the mirror image of the Erie Cut: a division above ground instead of below ground.

Currently there are crews working on the bridge. Do you think the bridge can actually be improved, or will it always be a flawed piece of transportation history, outdated from its inception? If it can be improved, what changes would need to be done to it?

By following railroad principles in designing the Skyway, designer Fred Lavis inadvertently made it almost impossible to upgrade the roadway. The right-of-way is simply too narrow, and the development presses in too closely. I have nothing but compassion for the people who will have to figure out what to do with it.

For more on Steven Hart, visit his website.

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