| |
N0KFQ > TODAY 11.12.12 16:13l 55 Lines 2473 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 32651_KB0WSA
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Dec 11
Path: IZ3LSV<IW0QNL<IK6ZDE<VE2PKT<N4JOA<N4ZKF<N0KFQ<KB0WSA
Sent: 121211/1503Z 32651@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.53
...
Dec 11, 1962:
NYC authorities jettison plans for expressway across Lower
Manhattan
On December 11, 1962, the New York City Board of Estimate
unanimously votes against a plan for a $100 million elevated
expressway across the bottom of Manhattan. The road, known as the
Lower Manhattan Expressway, had been in the works since 1941. It
was supposed to link the Holland Tunnel on the city's West Side
with the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges on the east side,
slicing right through the neighborhoods now known as TriBeCa and
SoHo.
The powerful city planner Robert Moses had urged the city to
build the Lower Manhattan Expressway because, he said, it would
ease the cross-town traffic that made it very difficult, and no
doubt very annoying, to get from New Jersey to Long Island in a
car. Other highway advocates agreed with Moses. "The people who
reap the benefits of such a project are numbered in the
millions," an official from one downtown business group told a
reporter, while a spokesman for the Automobile Club of New York
called the road "essential."
However, the proposed road stood to cause a great deal of damage
to the city neighborhoods in its path. Some 1,972 families who
lived in the roadway would have to move, as would 804 local
businesses. This was perfectly all right with Moses and his
allies--"when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis," Moses
famously declared, "you have to hack your way with a meat
axe"--but by 1962, preservationist groups had joined with
residents of the threatened neighborhoods in protest against the
road. Highways like the Lower Manhattan Expressway would make
city life worse, not better, these anti-Moses activists argued;
the road would make poor neighborhoods poorer and would actually
lead to more traffic congestion, not less.
In December 1962, the Board of Estimate sided with this point of
view and refused to give highway officials the right to condemn
the land in the proposed right-of-way. In 1963, the City Planning
Commission tried to "demap" the expressway, or kill the plan for
good, but Moses and his allies fought back. The Board of Estimate
reversed its 1962 decision in 1964, and the next year Mayor
Wagner announced that he would begin to bulldoze as soon as
possible. It took until 1969 for New York Governor Nelson
Rockefeller to declare that Lower Manhattan was safe from the
highway for good.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
Outpost Version 2.6.0 c29
Read previous mail | Read next mail
| |
