 Alley homes and backyard shacks especially deteriorated, while the factories, shipping, and shipbuilding industries which had supplied most of the area jobs largely left the area, leaving the Inner Harbor a desolate expanse of rotting piers, empty warehouses, and sunken ships.The neighborhood was seized by the government during the early 1970s and emptied of its residents, churches, and other institutions in preparation for the building of Interstate 95 and Interstate 70 through downtown Baltimore.The interstate would have destroyed the historic neighborhoods of Otterbein, Federal Hill, Highlandtown and Fell's Point.