How Manhattan Narrowly Avoided Being Sliced In Half

Robert Moses changed New York forever , razing neighborhoods to work up the gargantuan Brooklyn - Queens Expressway . But did you know he dreamt of doing the same to Manhattan ?

It was called the Lower Manhattan Expressway , or LOMEX , and whilewe’ve count atthe ill - destine project before , a new display is a prospect to look back at how dramatically NYC could have changed . The exhibit , In the Shadow of the Highway : Robert Moses ’ Expressway and the Battle for Downtown , open this week in the lobby of the New York City Municipal Archives , and shows off photos and plans beneath alloy strut designed to look like those which would have created a raised six- to ten - lane elevated expressway across Manhattan .

You should go check out the display if you may , but if you ’re inquire what LOMEX even was , here ’s the backstory . The program was to run a two - pronged elevated main road from the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges up to Broome Street and west across to the Holland Tunnel . At the meter — in the middle of World War II — Moses posed it as a security proceeds ; there was no just way to get quickly from Long Island to New Jersey .

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A mathematical function by the architect Paul Rudolph , who washired by the Ford Foundationto study LOMEX in the late 1960s . Library of Congress .

But over the following decades , it became light that his architectural plan was more than just about defence force . It would have razed neighborhood that were then consider undesirable — former - fashioned and foul with age buildings . Just like Moses razed whole neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens to install a sprawl elevated route , he intended to turn miserable Manhattan into a sparkling example of modernity .

The Meat Ax and the Sick City

Even Moses acknowledged that his method were extreme . In fact , he had a term for it : The meat ax . New York , he debate , was already so dumb and complex that you had to make cut somewhere . certain , other freshly - planned metropolis could preserve account and verify everyone was well-chosen . But harmonize to Moses , New York City neededdrastic measuring stick , as he indicate in a quote fromThe Power Broker :

you’re able to pull any kind of video you like on a clean slate and pamper your every impulse in the wild in laying out a New Delhi , Canberra and Brasilia , but when you lock in an overbuilt metropolis you have to cut up your way with a meat ax .

Imagine a administrative official sound out that today ! It was a time before preservation and urban protagonism be in mastermind form . Preserving the gumption of the city was a ridiculous idea — the city ask to be spue of its filth , not protected .

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The East Side Express Highway under construction in 1937 . AP Photo .

This strange , antiseptic outlook can be traced alllllll the way back to Europe at the turn of the 100 , when academics and designer first started thinking about metropolis as living networks . The sociologist Georg Simmel , pen in 1903 , was the first to really describe how city affected the genial outlook of their inhabitants — metropolis indweller , Simmel reasoned , were blasé , even neurotic , because of the neutral , consuming , and money - obsess demands of the city .

But to the designer of twenties and thirty Europe , the metropolis was n’t just neurotic . It was actually sick . The thinking went that a city ’s ills — crime , poorness , you name it — could belinked to its poor designits thoughtlessly narrow alley and dirty streets , its crumble tenement house and poor plumbing . Le Corbusier described “ the Cancer of Paris , ” as Andrew Lees recountsin his volume about the urbanism of the time . ( Here’sa gravid essay on sickly citiesby Teresa Almeida if your interest is pique . )

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alternatively , Le Corb and his equal offer up a futuristic visual modality of the urban center that was free , fair , full of lodging heap in in high spirits - rises and surround by plentiful park .

Renderings by the architect Paul Rudolph , who washired by the Ford Foundationto study LOMEX in the former 1960s . Library of Congress .

To your 2015 eyes , this vision probably looks doomed , knowing what hap to the public living accommodations works in American and European cities design around this idea . But in the 1940s and 50 , it was still the permeating way to blab out about the problems of the innovative city . Moses was n’t just exit to cure Manhattan , he was run short to cut the cancer away .

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Again , with his meat ax .

Hell’s Hundred Acres

The Lower East Side and the neighborhoods of Little Italy and Chinatown did n’t seem meaning at the time . To Moses ’ eyes , the erstwhile factories and cast - iron facade were relics of the 1800s .

By Moses ’s day , it was a drear part of the metropolis — and , crucially , not home to any well - to - do New Yorkers , but to mostly pitiful immigrants . Many of the construction were in deep disrepair , and present - day SoHo ’s nickname was “ Hell ’s Hundred Acres”–given , agree to theNew York Public Library , because of the many fire that bounce up in the locality ’s aging buildings .

Turkeys for sale on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side in 1939 . AP Photo / John Lindsay ; A cart vendor on Mott and Grand in 1958 . AP Photo / Dan Grossi .

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Moses did n’t exactly want to demolish all of these old streets ; he want to bypass them completely . Most of the old gridiron would exist beneath the sword skeleton of a new metropolis , where sinewy trucks and high - speed transportation system accelerate into New Jersey , and America at tumid , at high speed . certain , almost 2,000 kinsfolk would be displaced ; but he envisage rehousing them in the gleam , spike - like towers that would spring up up along the boundary of LOMEX .

Models create by Paul Rudolph . Library of Congress .

Not many conception drawing exist of the construct from its former mean solar day , but most of the images you ’ll see here were actually a study of the concept by the architect Paul Rudolph , who in the recent sixties was employ by the Ford Foundation to canvas the musical theme . His interpreting and manikin , which show a intense vision for future - Manhattan , were all but forgotten until the were rediscovered a few years ago byBrett Littman .

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Too Poor to Preserve, Too Expensive to Tear Down

The story of how LOMEX give way is well - know : A dictated grouping of activists , led by Jane Jacobs , valorously turn the lunar time period of public vox populi against the marriage offer in the late sixties , sparking the first flickers of preservation in the metropolis .

In fact , a famed building that did finish up as rubble during the age when Moses was pushing for — theoriginal Penn Station — terminate up playing a part , catalyzing New Yorkers against other renewal undertaking . “ [ T]he release of Pennsylvania Station awakened all New Yorkers to the specter of urban replenishment that haunted their city , ” spell Harvard’sAndreas Georgoulias and Ali Khawaja , and “ a consequently unattackable preservation bowel movement freeze the Village textile in clip to go on the negotiation that Jacobs and Moses begin for generations to come . ”

But there were other reasons the undertaking was defeated , too — namely , its cost , which totaled $ 749 million in today ’s clam . Here ’s how theSoHo Memory Projectexplains the survival of SoHo , using the language of the preservationist Brendan Gill :

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Much of the most admired computer architecture of honest-to-god New York — the SoHo district , for exemplar , and scotch of solid block in Greenwich Village and Little Italy — have survived because , at a vital moment , the urban center did n’t have enough money to pay off for knocking them down .

It ’s funny now to recollect that some of New York ’s most worthful actual estate today — and its most architecturally important — was saved , in part , because it was n’t valuable enough to compensate to destroy it .

you’re able to check outIn the Shadow of the Highway : Robert Moses ’ Expressway and the Battle for Downtownuntil March 15 .

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