Transportation
The Fight Against the Lower Manhattan Expressway
A new exhibit shows how residents' organized resistance to a major highway through SoHo influenced modern community-involved planning.
Before the San Francisco freeway revolts, before the citizens of Boston put the brakes on a proposal to run I-95 straight into Back Bay, there was LOMEX—the Lower Manhattan Expressway, a 10-lane elevated highway set to blast through NYC’s SoHo and Little Italy.
Master builder Robert Moses proposed the highway, running down Broome Street, to facilitate the swift flow of traffic from New Jersey to Long Island. Drivers would speed through the Holland Tunnel, across lower Manhattan, and take either the Manhattan or Williamsburg bridges to cross the East River.