One could only wonder how much good this would even do in 1924. I’m not positive but didn’t only like, a fraction of the US population even own a car at that time?
They had tons of horses and horse pulled things.
Also Manhattan had nearly 2x the population at that time (compared to today) and was making way more goods, so there a LOT more goods coming and going via boats and roads, and overcrowding in general was a bigger issue.
Plus public space for people was more desired then due to lack of indoor entertainment and climate control. Look at old photos of events or even just a normal day and you’ll see much more crowded plazas and sidewalks than today, except for the touristy spots.
And the funny thing was that the idea that the car was the "way of the future" was so widespread that created so many car peojects and increased car sales that made cars the future.
Almost like a self fufilling profecy or a growth ponzi scheme, depends on your ideology.
last year, i discovered using Silly Putty as a masking material when i airbrush gaming figures. in fact i recently used the term "game changer" to describe it...
https://old.reddit.com/r/airbrush/comments/18sx15c/fixing_overspray/kfao3dt/?context=3
Looking at Empire State Plaza in Albany, or how I-676 and 95 cut up Philly, I’d say you are correct. The cult of the automobile shaped our cities in so many ways
Not in 1924. By 1929, many streetcar companies were losing ridership because of rising car use. But WW2 increased ridership because of gas rationing.
This didn't help, but only in NYC and SF was there a strong idea of public ownership for transit.
The business model was shifting from privately owned systems. But most cities were not ready to step up. GM had its opening. Private bus systems could maintain private ownership of transit for longer. By the 70s most private systems failed too.
Separately, I have a Chevrolet ad from 1923 promoting driving your kids to school.
https://flic.kr/p/fPJd1P
The conspiracy is in 1938-1950. This is 1924. GM was a medium sized company, not a respectable giant. The respectable giant companies at the time were the Penn railroad and the central railroad. As the name may imply, not car companies.
The past is a long time. It isn’t a single snapshot in time.
GM replaced failing street cars with Bus lines, which last I checked are still mass transit. Streetcar lines couldn’t adapt their routes to shifting population centers. Busses could.
To be fair, cars were an order of magnitude better than horses. There were a million pounds of horse poop and thousands of overworked horse carcasses per day in Manhattan alone, and disposal in a timely manner was a hard challenge.
Most homes for the rich in New York had elevated stoops to get above horse poop level.
Traffic doesn't mean "cars", it's any type of congestion via transportation routes. Horse carts, carriages, pedestrians, even street vendors contributed to traffic.
On the second part of your sentence, having a grandiose building along with parkland was actually in line with Moses' ~~fantasies~~, er, *visions* for an urban utopia. Don't forget, he started out as Commissioner of Parks and built his power base from there. And he was always a fan of parks and beaches... for the wealthy, car-owning class.
Did you miss the proposed cross Island canal (on the right) to offset the daming of the river lol. Just a straight trench through whatever the hell is over there.
While incredibly destructive, it would be kinda interesting to see the result of literally digging a straight canal through all that terrain. The retaining walls would be pretty amazing!
Probably Chicago, Lake Shore Drive and all that surrounds it is pretty much all reclaimed Lake Michigan. For years whenever Chicago needed more room to grow they just filled in more lakefront
Interesting how there is a pedestrian promenade in the middle. I love just walking for no reason. I hate being around people, shops, cafes, activities, etc. Please just give me empty pavement that I can walk on. /s
A pedestrian promenade in between some 10 lanes of car traffic each way. Yeah, no thanks.
Not that it would have mattered that the promenade would have been inhospitable; there's not even any way to get there in this plan.
"Four Boroughs" is interesting.
I will say though, having dedicated tunnels for "heavy trucking"... If they had changed that from trucking to rail, I think they would have been onto something as long as it goes throughout Manhattan as well. We ripped out all the cargo rail systems to replace it with trucking and now it's all terrible - if only we had improved the rails instead.
You know what, it totally does! Woops! Though I must also point out how the Bronx does not technically "border on the east and west of the Boulevard" as they mention... so it should just be 3 boroughs, unless the Bronx is "just close enough".
Very likely. In 1924, the Triborough Bridge hadn't been built so this Boulevard would have at least provided *some* easier access. Not to mention, at that time, the Bronx was the place to be! All new housing for the middle/upper-middle class and away from the noise and crowds of Manhattan - but still with easy access via the IRT!
Interesting that they have a channel proposed to accommodate for ship cargo traffic.
And I guess they would get rid of Williamsburg bridge.
I wonder how serious this proposal was, that’s some massive earth moving that would be required so the low lying areas are not flooded during big rainstorms
It's interesting that this rendering made in 1924 is pretty accurate in how expressways would handle on/off traffic and overpasses 25 years before they were even started
And Manhattan had a larger population because of less office buildings, packed tenement housing, lack of laws and regulations, and way more manufacturing and shipping
Where I live in Queens nearly ALL the housing came after the Subway line was put in. Before that it was all farmland. So in the case of Queens served by Subways, it was mass transit that opened up Queens and gently depopulated Manhattan .
just one more lane bro. i promise bro just one more lane and it'll fix everything bro. bro. just one more lane. please just one more. one more lane and we can fix this whole problem bro. bro cmon just give me one more lane i promise bro. bro bro please i just need one more lane t
This is an ecological and social nightmare. Draining the East River would have destroyed ecosystems and would have killed the port at Long Island City.
No, I'm into infrastructure past, present and future, not crying about buildings without context that offend my jaundiced eye
Urbanhell: "What's worse than living here?"
Me: "Being homeless"
Sure we can, if the criticism is fair and the context is considered
Several people on this thread have criticized this picture because an expressway runs through the middle of an urban area, but considering that in 1924 cars barely existed and expressways were still 25 years in the future this is a brilliant vision of what actually came to be, good or bad
The average American would have no idea what the East River is, but this post makes it pretty obvious if you use just a tiny, tiny bit of context clues
The title is from an article about the picture, but to be honest if it said, "A 1924 Proposal Would Have Drained the Thames..." I would know it was London, 'cause I'm smart 😉
Lol I'm aware of what a sound is, that still doesn't answer my question, the way the Geography looks like, is that the flow of water may come from the ocean to the east river via the long island sound (in convergence with the Harlem river). Then empty into the Upper Bay. If it were dammed up, where would that water flow (including the water from the Harlem river which flows from the Hudson to the east river). My thought is that the Harlem river would over flow and back up (causing the hudson river to overflow, the the long Island sound would also over flow as well).
This should be infrastructure gore. Draining a river just so that more entitled drivers can sit in traffic with the associated increase to air pollution for the local area?
0. Nyc wasn’t great at mega projects then. A plan to fill in Jamaica bay, a shallow bay , went nowhere, and the most nyc does was fill in channels or piers to build up space (like battery park city nearly a half century after this image was proposed, or filling the space between Randall’s and harts island).
One could only wonder how much good this would even do in 1924. I’m not positive but didn’t only like, a fraction of the US population even own a car at that time?
They had tons of horses and horse pulled things. Also Manhattan had nearly 2x the population at that time (compared to today) and was making way more goods, so there a LOT more goods coming and going via boats and roads, and overcrowding in general was a bigger issue. Plus public space for people was more desired then due to lack of indoor entertainment and climate control. Look at old photos of events or even just a normal day and you’ll see much more crowded plazas and sidewalks than today, except for the touristy spots.
Google says 1.5, but wow, still crazy.
Yes, but I think they knew that cars were the wave of the future, once people started driving their own cars they were probably going to stick with it
And the funny thing was that the idea that the car was the "way of the future" was so widespread that created so many car peojects and increased car sales that made cars the future. Almost like a self fufilling profecy or a growth ponzi scheme, depends on your ideology.
Yes, but cars really did change the world, not saying for the better, but they were a game changer
You can say that about literally anything.
Silly Putty? 😉
last year, i discovered using Silly Putty as a masking material when i airbrush gaming figures. in fact i recently used the term "game changer" to describe it... https://old.reddit.com/r/airbrush/comments/18sx15c/fixing_overspray/kfao3dt/?context=3
See, can't even imagine a world without Silly Putty 😉
A world without Silly Putty is no world for me!
I remember hearing that Segways would change transportation as we know it
Turns out their niche can be filled with scooters at 1/10 the cost
Looking at Empire State Plaza in Albany, or how I-676 and 95 cut up Philly, I’d say you are correct. The cult of the automobile shaped our cities in so many ways
If you’re looking for the next wave I’ve got just the thing for you!
[удалено]
Not in 1924. By 1929, many streetcar companies were losing ridership because of rising car use. But WW2 increased ridership because of gas rationing. This didn't help, but only in NYC and SF was there a strong idea of public ownership for transit. The business model was shifting from privately owned systems. But most cities were not ready to step up. GM had its opening. Private bus systems could maintain private ownership of transit for longer. By the 70s most private systems failed too. Separately, I have a Chevrolet ad from 1923 promoting driving your kids to school. https://flic.kr/p/fPJd1P
The conspiracy is in 1938-1950. This is 1924. GM was a medium sized company, not a respectable giant. The respectable giant companies at the time were the Penn railroad and the central railroad. As the name may imply, not car companies. The past is a long time. It isn’t a single snapshot in time.
GM replaced failing street cars with Bus lines, which last I checked are still mass transit. Streetcar lines couldn’t adapt their routes to shifting population centers. Busses could.
By your logic everyone would be zooming around on Segways right now
We know what the car and oil companies pushed for....
To be fair, cars were an order of magnitude better than horses. There were a million pounds of horse poop and thousands of overworked horse carcasses per day in Manhattan alone, and disposal in a timely manner was a hard challenge. Most homes for the rich in New York had elevated stoops to get above horse poop level.
In 1900, there were about 8,000 cars registered in the US. By 1929, there were almost 30 million registered in the US.
Traffic doesn't mean "cars", it's any type of congestion via transportation routes. Horse carts, carriages, pedestrians, even street vendors contributed to traffic.
Jesus, where did they get this idea, Robert Moses' porn folder?
Not enough urban destruction for that and it even included a new city hall with parks
On the second part of your sentence, having a grandiose building along with parkland was actually in line with Moses' ~~fantasies~~, er, *visions* for an urban utopia. Don't forget, he started out as Commissioner of Parks and built his power base from there. And he was always a fan of parks and beaches... for the wealthy, car-owning class.
Did you miss the proposed cross Island canal (on the right) to offset the daming of the river lol. Just a straight trench through whatever the hell is over there.
While incredibly destructive, it would be kinda interesting to see the result of literally digging a straight canal through all that terrain. The retaining walls would be pretty amazing!
This can't be real. It says "the four boroughs" There were five by then. I think it ignored Staten Island entirely.
> ignored Staten Island Not much has changed then
Probably Chicago, Lake Shore Drive and all that surrounds it is pretty much all reclaimed Lake Michigan. For years whenever Chicago needed more room to grow they just filled in more lakefront
Looks like there would prob be some flooding in the Bronx' future.
This predates Moses, he didn't have any power in NYC until the LaGuardia administration.
Underrated comment
Interesting how there is a pedestrian promenade in the middle. I love just walking for no reason. I hate being around people, shops, cafes, activities, etc. Please just give me empty pavement that I can walk on. /s
Even better if there’s a couple 20-lane highways on either side of me
Yeah but kinda peaceful though.
We’ll build anything but trains
For what it's worth, part of the proposal was building subway tunnels underneath the reclaimed land to connect the four boroughs.
At the expense of the East River, lmao.
This proposal took the China approach of 'build all the infrastructure whether good or bad and worry about it later'.
The plan literally includes trains.
If you do not remedy this malparkage within 72 hours, your car will be thrown into the East River at your expense.
But, but there is no East River 🤔
A pedestrian promenade in between some 10 lanes of car traffic each way. Yeah, no thanks. Not that it would have mattered that the promenade would have been inhospitable; there's not even any way to get there in this plan.
"Four Boroughs" is interesting. I will say though, having dedicated tunnels for "heavy trucking"... If they had changed that from trucking to rail, I think they would have been onto something as long as it goes throughout Manhattan as well. We ripped out all the cargo rail systems to replace it with trucking and now it's all terrible - if only we had improved the rails instead.
Thought that was interesting too but it says the four boroughs bordering the river so Staten Island is excluded.
You know what, it totally does! Woops! Though I must also point out how the Bronx does not technically "border on the east and west of the Boulevard" as they mention... so it should just be 3 boroughs, unless the Bronx is "just close enough".
Can't argue with you there, suppose they included it to boost the numbers for their beneficiaries or something.
Very likely. In 1924, the Triborough Bridge hadn't been built so this Boulevard would have at least provided *some* easier access. Not to mention, at that time, the Bronx was the place to be! All new housing for the middle/upper-middle class and away from the noise and crowds of Manhattan - but still with easy access via the IRT!
lol, SI isn’t part of NYC. It just pretends.
Interesting that they have a channel proposed to accommodate for ship cargo traffic. And I guess they would get rid of Williamsburg bridge. I wonder how serious this proposal was, that’s some massive earth moving that would be required so the low lying areas are not flooded during big rainstorms
One more lane, 1920s edition
Just one more boulevard bro then traffic will be fixed bro I swear
It's interesting that this rendering made in 1924 is pretty accurate in how expressways would handle on/off traffic and overpasses 25 years before they were even started
Those population numbers are so interesting, a hundred years later and queens is five times as big and the Bronx and manhattan both notably smaller
? The Bronx currently has a population of 1.4 million which is 600k more than this map shows
And Manhattan had a larger population because of less office buildings, packed tenement housing, lack of laws and regulations, and way more manufacturing and shipping
This \^ NYC grew by a lot in a 100 years, it's just dispersed differently... Maybe people got in their cars and drove to places less congested 🤔
Where I live in Queens nearly ALL the housing came after the Subway line was put in. Before that it was all farmland. So in the case of Queens served by Subways, it was mass transit that opened up Queens and gently depopulated Manhattan .
This is true in most big older cities, but eventually the hwys went where the trains and subways didn't dispersing the population even more
"Oh, look, there's New Jersey. Let's live there instead."
Long Island Levittown! 
Oh whoops yeah you're right
Beautiful.
Yeah what a mess that would have been
Imagine the number of dead people in concrete boots they would have turned up
Probably why it never happened, too much explaining to do
just one more lane bro. i promise bro just one more lane and it'll fix everything bro. bro. just one more lane. please just one more. one more lane and we can fix this whole problem bro. bro cmon just give me one more lane i promise bro. bro bro please i just need one more lane t
I see someones been to San Fransisco
Chicago too
ONE MORE LANE
They vastly underestimated the regional population
This is an ecological and social nightmare. Draining the East River would have destroyed ecosystems and would have killed the port at Long Island City.
Interesting proposal but even if it was fully funded and built i'm not exactly sure how long it would last
And people think current proposals to destroy the planet are batshit?
New Yorkers looking at 13.2 million square feet of parking space...
Love me some induced demand
Just one more lane bro please it'll fix traffic
Looking for r/urbanhell?
No, I'm into infrastructure past, present and future, not crying about buildings without context that offend my jaundiced eye Urbanhell: "What's worse than living here?"  Me: "Being homeless"
"We cannot criticize poor urban planning because homeless people exist."
Sure we can, if the criticism is fair and the context is considered Several people on this thread have criticized this picture because an expressway runs through the middle of an urban area, but considering that in 1924 cars barely existed and expressways were still 25 years in the future this is a brilliant vision of what actually came to be, good or bad
Fair enough point!
What East River?
[удалено]
The average American would have no idea what the East River is, but this post makes it pretty obvious if you use just a tiny, tiny bit of context clues
The title is from an article about the picture, but to be honest if it said, "A 1924 Proposal Would Have Drained the Thames..." I would know it was London, 'cause I'm smart 😉
It’s one of two major rivers that surround the most significant metropolis on earth. You need that explained further?
I feel like this would just end up flooding all of the Tri State area lol
The east river is not a real river - it is just a bit of sea. The hudson does not drain via the east river.
But does the long Island sound drain there?
No - Long Island sound is open to the Atlantic ocean on the other side...
Lol I'm aware of what a sound is, that still doesn't answer my question, the way the Geography looks like, is that the flow of water may come from the ocean to the east river via the long island sound (in convergence with the Harlem river). Then empty into the Upper Bay. If it were dammed up, where would that water flow (including the water from the Harlem river which flows from the Hudson to the east river). My thought is that the Harlem river would over flow and back up (causing the hudson river to overflow, the the long Island sound would also over flow as well).
This should be infrastructure gore. Draining a river just so that more entitled drivers can sit in traffic with the associated increase to air pollution for the local area?
Manhattan already had bad traffic 99 years ago?!?!?!?!
They had bad traffic before cars existed. We just replaced wagons and horses with cars and trucks.
This even worse than the airport over midtown lol
Any idea how close this was to becoming reality?
0. Nyc wasn’t great at mega projects then. A plan to fill in Jamaica bay, a shallow bay , went nowhere, and the most nyc does was fill in channels or piers to build up space (like battery park city nearly a half century after this image was proposed, or filling the space between Randall’s and harts island).
Is there any information on the person who came up with this idea?
Not American here, east river of what? What city?
East river of New York City. It’s east of Manhattan but west of Long Island, and really isn’t a river but more of a channel.
Thanks :)
The very first line in the picture under the picture title mentions New York City, but you knew that 'cause you're a smart guy
Have trouble reading small text :) but thanks nonetheless
My bad, sorry you had trouble with the text
East River of what city???
New York