nyc-urbanism:A recent blog post from the Municipal Archives details Robert Moses’ fight to bui
nyc-urbanism:A recent blog post from the Municipal Archives details Robert Moses’ fight to build a bridge where the Battery Tunnel stands today. Some background for those who are not familiar with the story; In 1939 Moses proposed constructing a Brooklyn Battery Bridge connecting Battery Park with Red Hook Brooklyn. The bridge would have used Battery Park for the bridge approach, demolishing Castle Clinton. Opposition to the bridge eventually lead to the creation of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (1950), as @nycarchives explains, was Moses’ most bitter defeat. The fight stretched from Albany to City Hall to the halls of the White House and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s War Department… Documents, reports, letters and even Western Union telegrams in the Municipal Library and Archives paint a vivid picture of how a master builder used to getting his way by cajoling and bullying his opponents finally met his match. Moses wrote that it was “indisputable” that a bridge would be better, cheaper and more efficient than the tunnel. Lacking funds to construct the tunnel, Mayor La Guardia quickly lent his support for the bridge. [In 1939 the RPA] issued a letter strongly opposing the bridge plan, saying that a “series of vehicular tunnels of relatively small capacity and constructed progressively as demands require is a far better solution” than an enormous bridge. The RPA contended that the proposed site was “not a natural one for the bridge and its approaches in Manhattan would cause unjustifiable defacement and make impossible … improvement of Battery Park.”President Roosevelt’s War Department needed to approve the project before work could begin because there were War Department facilities on Governor’s Island and Treasury Department facilities in the Battery. There also was concern that the bridge would be a wartime target, impede shipping access to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. @ (at Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel)https://www.instagram.com/p/B3dBru_HJ3r/?igshid=qax655d5rw58 -- source link