In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mrs. Stoloff was among those who helped kill plans for the Crosstown Expressway, which would have connected I-95 with the Schuylkill Expressway by running through South Street and the neighboring African American community.
"People were rabidly opposed to it, and she was one of them, a very vocal opponent," Abraham said. "It would [have been] a slash across the face of the city."
Abraham remembered Mrs. Stoloff arguing that, by building the crosstown route, "we're going to put a big wall" through the shopping district on South Street, "put thousands of people out of business," and uproot a neighborhood "where poor blacks had their homes."
Said Abraham: "She wanted to make sure that Philadelphia was the best possible city to live in for everybody."
Mrs. Stoloff had been a volunteer member of the Reading Terminal Market Corp. since 2001 and had been its vice chair since 2005.
In February 1993, she was cochair with Jill Horn of A Valentine to the Market, a fund-raiser that attracted 700 guests to the site at 12th and Arch Streets. The event was meant to show how the market was dealing with construction of the neighboring Convention Center.
Paul Steinke, general manager of the market, said, "Becky was a devoted civic activist, committed to the betterment of Philadelphia and her neighborhood, which was Society Hill."
Mrs. Stoloff was president of the Society Hill Civic Association from 1980 to 1991 and its vice president from 2007 to 2010. She was vice president of Society Hill's Head House Conservancy from 2007 to 2012, an organization that, daughter-in-law Leslie Crary said, she co-founded in 1990 with Bernice Hamel.
