Highway Sound Walls
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote Robert Frost. He might have had in mind the highway sound wall, those sometimes pink, sometimes beige, sometimes smooth, sometimes grooved, 15-to-30-foot high facades that march relentlessly across the landscape, muffling noise while also hemming in sight lines, censoring vistas, and turning stretches of highway into concrete canyons.
Drive Route 80 and the turnpike, Routes 17 and 287, or cross the bridge into Queens and Long Island and you’ll pick up the trail: a half-mile here, a quarter-mile there, one side or both, set back behind bushes or right on the shoulder. Once relatively rare, a remedy for back yards invaded by highways, they have become a means to shield entire neighborhoods from general highway noise. The trend is reminiscent of one that started in China, circa 475 BC. To keep out marauding horsemen, the ancient Chinese erected walls at the edge of the Mongolian Plain. Problem was, the wily horsemen kept sneaking around the ends, so the Chinese responded with extensions and new sections, until, 2,000 years later, the various walls totaled 3,700 miles.
Unlike the Great Wall of China, the Great American Sound Wall is not visible from outer space, but it’s getting there. It’s growing by about 100 miles a year, according to one sound wall company’s Web site. At that rate, even starting from scratch, it would take only 37 years to match the Chinese accomplishment.
Of course, theirs would still be better looking. The Chinese had the foresight to build a Wonder of the World, a wall with great architectural character —part fortress, part castle —making it an object of veneration today. The Great American Sound Wall has more in common with the Berlin Wall: concrete, featureless, utilitarian. Too bland to be eyesores, sound walls are more like visual vacuums, sucking up all the scenery, except for the treetops and an occasional church steeple. And, without scenery, the American highway becomes bleak terrain, a claustrophobic world of asphalt, big green signs, dented guard rails, gas stations, and the occasional teepee-domed salt storage building.
To quote Frost, again: “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know/What I was walling in or walling out,/And to whom I was like to give offense.”
Martin Santini was one who took offense when sound walls began going up on Route 95 along the border of Leonia and Englewood. The Englewood Cliffs architect found a favorite view erased. Entering Route 95 west from the ramp at Broad Avenue, Santini recalls, “I used to see this little pond with an island in the center. It was very picturesque —a habitat for ducks and geese. Now there’s just this big wall.”
Santini, an officer in the American Institute of Architects, is a sound-wall skeptic. He thinks earthen berms and dense foliage would be just as effective, and much more attractive. “I would certainly rather see greenery than these man-made monstrosities. They make you feel as if you’re in an urban environment.”
The view from the other side of the wall comes from Leonia’s mayor-elect Laurence Cherchi, who spent years as a councilman filling out applications and petitioning state agencies to allocate the $15 million for the 8,900 feet of walls.
“I’m sure the people who live around Englewood’s Crystal Lake [Santini’s ‘little pond’] feel differently about it,” he said. “I doubt they miss their view of the highway, and I’m sure they don’t miss the noise from it.”
Or, as Frost put it: “Good fences make good neighbors.”
By most accounts, sound walls reduce noise by about a half. For those being driven batty by the woosh-woosh-woosh of the highway, that can be a godsend. But it’s not always the answer. Many people are disappointed. They expect the sound to be reduced from a roar to a barely audible hum, but instead they get a muffled roar.
The more walls that go up, the more people see them and want them for their own communities. They apply to the agency that owns the road —NJDOT or the Turnpike Authority, say — for relief. Eligibility is determined by decibel levels and a federal formula that factors in the number of homes affected, property values, and the cost of the walls. The state has about 100 miles of walls right now, according to officials at the NJDOT, who say the pace of installation has slowed a bit from the late 1990s. However, big road-widening projects like that on Route 80 can spawn miles of walls, totally changing the character of the highway.
It’s not just those on the noisy side of the sound wall that have aesthetic concerns. Some homeowners decline the offer of sound walls, because they don’t want to be walled in, object to the loss of light or breeze, or just don’t like the way they look.
In the evolution of the sound wall, looks are a fairly recent consideration. Most walls are post-and-panel constructions, more like gigantic concrete fences than true walls. The posts are squarish beams with slots that accept concrete panels. The concrete is generally pre-colored, and sometimes stamped with a texture. In North Jersey, pink seems to be the most popular color, and corrugated the most popular texture.
Every now and then, a community succeeds in getting something with a little style. Some have postmodern architectural features, like the ochre ones built along I-295 in Camden County. These have a mix of smooth and rough textures, arched and sloping contours, and planters sprouting junipers to soften the effect of all that concrete.
Other interesting walls are those along the extension of Route 21 through Clifton’s Botany Village and the adjacent area of Passaic. They borrow a brick motif from nearby 19th century factory buildings. The different patterns of brickwork and the white cap at the top of the wall break up the façade into the classical tripartite division of base, middle, and capital. One stretch of wall has a graceful run of arches reminiscent of an ancient viaduct.
In Pueblo, Colo., aversion to the typical prefab walls caused officials to invite bids from local artists to come up with a design for the 1.5-mile wall. The result was an undulating, adobe-like surface with patterns that look like the shapes in a weathered rock face.
These are the exception, however. Most walls are either plain or prefabricated with some simple design. A puzzling one can be found along stretches of Route 80 between Hackensack and Paterson. These walls have a curious squiggle pattern – a wavy line culminating in an almond shape. What is it? As a Rorschach, it draws associations from a biology textbook.
“My son calls it the spermatozoa,” says Santini. “He’s right. That’s what it looks like. He asked me, ‘Dad what does that mean?’ I had no answer for him. Who would come up with a design like that?” Cherchi concurs. “I can’t figure out what else it might be.”
Inquiries to the DOT have not brought forth an explanation. In all fairness, a closer inspection shows that the long wavy line actually has an almond shape at both ends. But, from a speeding car, the eye doesn’t pick that up. It sees a head and a long tail.
And after a while, it begins to seem like a metaphor for highway travel. All of us racing along, jockeying for position, not unlike our biological counterparts, each of which competes with millions in a contest that only one will win. Not exactly an ennobling notion.
But, hemmed in and lacking the diversions of scenery, the mind has to fasten on something.
World by Design column
2003
