2. The Lower Manhattan Expressway

Lower Manhattan Expressway map, a project of Robert Moses
Proposal for the Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOMEX) that would connect the East and Hudson River crossings. via Library of Congress. LOMEX splits into the two roadways that lead to the East River crossings

Luckily this thoroughfare never came to fruition, though part of Canal Street on the West Side shows the beginnings of construction for the Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOMEX). It resembled the map displayed above, connecting the Williamsburg Bridge and Manhattan Bridges over the East River, converging over SoHo, and heading west into New Jersey via the Holland Tunnel. The project would raze fourteen blocks of what is currently SoHo and Little Italy and would have cost the city an estimated $72 million in total, including the displacement of just under 2,000 families and over 800 businesses.

Entering the 1960s, support for LOMEX was greatly dwindling. Robert Moses was persistent, even in defeat: he wrote in his book Public Works: A Dangerous Trade, “Apparently the expressway has been shelved for the present. On the other hand, most of the parties concerned, including the Downtown Manhattan Association, the Regional Plan Association and others, agree that there must eventually be a Lower Manhattan Expressway.”