Yanni Tsipis, a graduate student in construction management in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, just wrote his second book about Massachusetts highway projects for the pictorial history series, Image of America. In "Building the Mass Pike," Tsipis tells the story of how William Callahan, then commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Works, built the highway and its Boston Extension (Route 128 into the city). Callahan built the extension as a toll road, despite the availability of federal funds that could have covered 90 percent of the cost through the Interstate Highway Act. Tsipis' first book was "Boston's Central Artery."
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on March 6, 2002.
