Photo © New York City Municipal Archives

Lower Manhattan Expressway

LOMEX and Canal Street Expressway

New York, New York

Highway

Description

This was a controversial plan for a large expressway through Lower Manhattan, originally conceived by the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority chairman Robert Moses. After the Planning Commission had approved the expressway proposal, the city moved to evict 2,000 families in 416 buildings along the expressway's route, as well as displace 804 businesses. However, residents started organizing protests against the relocation plan, led by community activist Jane Jacobs, who chaired the Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway, along with Margaret Mead, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lewis Mumford, Charles Abrams, and William H. Whyte.

Proposal, 1941

Commissioned, 1960

Decommissioned, 1971

Related People & Organizations

Jane Jacobs

Eleanor Roosevelt

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Canal St

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Moses's plan, funded as "slum clearance" by Title I of the Housing Act of 1949, also called for multiple blocks to be razed and replaced with upscale high-rises

The Lower Manhattan Expressway would have begun at the West Side Elevated Highway on the west side of Manhattan, where it would have merged with I-78 at the eastern portal of the Holland Tunnel

At Centre Street, near the eastern edge of Little Italy, the highway would have split into two branches that both led to bridges over the East River on Manhattan's east side, where the main branch would continue southeast as I-78 to the Williamsburg Bridge, while the other would head south to the Manhattan Bridge as I-478

Chrystie Street transit hub, as visualized by Paul Rudolph

The architectural model detailing how the Expressway was proposed to go over the neighborhoods, as designed by Paul Rudolph

Estimates published in The New York Times in 1962 showed that the $100 million cost would have been covered by $90 million from the federal government, $10 million from the state of New York, and $220,000 in city funds

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