5. Neighborhood Swaths in the South Bronx, Now Cross-Bronx Expressway

The Cross-Bronx Expressway construction didn’t eradicate whole neighborhoods, but it did cut through them rather haphazardly through blocks of apartment buildings, leaving them divided. Moses wasn’t sympathetic however, giving residents 90-days to vacate, demolishing buildings once the top floor was empty.

Choice quotes from Moses include: ‘When you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax.”Robert Caro, in his biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, discusses in depth what happened to the East Tremont neighborhood as a result, but as the name Cross-Bronx implies, many communities along the way suffered from this infrastructure project.  It displaced as many as 5,000 families, while an alternate proposed route along Crotona Park would have only affected 1-2% of that amount. 

Find out one project that luckily didn’t come to fruition from Robert Moses: the Lower Manhattan Expressway that would have cut through SoHo and Little Italy. For quite the opposite effect, see these places in New York City that are completely man made.

Find out which is her favorite highway, get in touch with the author @untappedmich.