Inspired by The Errant Isle of Manhattan, I decided to see what New York City looked like compared to other American metropolitan areas.

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Abandoned Subway Station in The Bronx

Hipsters and the Homeless: Exploration of the underground.

A relic of the old elevated subway days, Sedgwick Ave station connected the Jerome Ave line (4 train) to the 9th Ave Elevated. This was the connection between the old Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, the origin of the term “subway series”. The elevated were torn down over 50 years ago and very little remain. When the 9th Ave was torn down Sedgwick Ave stayed in operation as a shuttle between Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds but when the Giants packed up for the west coast there was no need (also the city had built a proper subway connecting the two stations in the 1930s).

For more information on Sedgwick Ave: Abandoned Stations : Sedgwick Ave

For the full sets of mine and reveire’s images (as well as full sized ones for your desktops):
Reveire3
Vanshnookenraggen

Here is the brand spanking new map of all the transit systems in the New York City area. That includes the MTA, PATH, AirTrain, Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, and the Newark City Subway.

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I finally figured out how to embed a Google Map in a post so now I will be updating the site with all sorts of cool maps.

The first is the Unbuilt Highways of New York City which is one I posted a link to last month and one I have been getting a lot of traffic from ever since Google added it to their “Custom Maps” content.

The second is the Unbuilt Highways of Boston which is newly expanded.

The third is the Unbuilt Highways of Albany, NY which is tiny but dear to my heart as I grew up in the area.

The last is the Unbuilt Highways of Providence, RI.

All of these maps are works in progress as Google is always adding new stuff and I just can’t leave my work “finished”.

Google Maps recently added a new feature where you can create your own maps and needless to say it is pretty awesome. They are great for making a quick map for someone to show them how to get some place but they are also great for the type of stuff I do. After playing around with it I came up with three maps, all unbuilt highways for Albany NY, New York City, and Boston. Whats even better is that you can download these maps and view them in Google Earth by clicking on the KLM button on the top right.

The first map I made was the unbuilt highways in Albany, NY. These were based on information from Capital Highways, a web site about highways in upstate New York. There are a number of large interchanges with ramps to no-where in Albany and this explains what happened to them. The blue line represents the Mid-Crosstown Arterial which would have cut straight through the heart of Albany and Washington Park. I-678 which would have bypassed the interchange of I-87 and I-90 in Colonie and gone directly to Albany International Airport. This off ramp is all that was ever built of the highway, which now serves as a connection to an office park. Finally the red line represents what would have been a spur off of I-90 through Rensselaer and connected with the Dunn Memorial Bridge. You can see where the bridge stops in mid-air here, where it would have continued east to connect with I-90.

The next map was for Boston, MA. In the Future MBTA section for the Orange Line I talk about how the current Orange Line was built in land cleared for the extension of I-95 into Boston. Here you can see what I was talking about along with the other highways that were to plow through the city. This map was based on information from Boston’s Canceled Highways. The red line represents I-95, both the northern section that would have run through Lynn Woods and the southern section which would have run through Hyde Park and Roxbury. The green line represents I-695, or the Inner Belt which would have ripped through Cambridge and Roxbury, almost completely leveling Cambridgeport for a gigantic interchange at the Mass Pike. You can see the remnants of the highway here where there are dead off ramps off of I-93 (and there is also a road called Innerbelt Road) and here, which was turned into Melnea Cass Boulevard. The yellow line represents Route 2, which today ends abruptly at Alewife but was supposed to carry on further into Cambridge. The blue and purple line represent Route 3 and an elevated relocation of the Mystic Valley Parkway, respectively. You can see the unbuilt portion of Route 3 at the interchange at Route 128. Each would have destroyed the picturesque, tree lined parkway that exists today.

The last map I made was for New York, NY. These are based off of the unbuilt highways section of NYCRoads.com, which is a fantastic resource. Not all of these were Robert Moses highways but many, such as the bridges across Long Island Sound, were. Some were merely ideas for expanding roads rather than actually building new highways, of which Queens Boulevard is a good example. There are far too many for me to talk about here but if you click on the road you will see information about it and a link the it’s page on NYCRoads.com.

Edit: I have now added these maps to this site, check out the Unbuilt Highways section for these and more.

I live along the East River in Manhattan. I moved here just under 2 years ago and when I did the skyline of western Queens and Brooklyn was of low rise, dirty, worn out tenement houses and warehouses, interspersed with church steeples. Today as I look out my window there is a mountain of towers in Queens and skeletons of scaffolding and pre-cast concrete rising out of Brooklyn. This is not shocking to me, after all the city is undergoing possibly the largest building boom since the 1920’s. Everyday when I walk to the subway I see buildings going up. In the two years I will have lived here I can count at least 10 condo towers that have gone up along my walk to the subway alone. Some have glass walls with windows reminiscent of Mondrian, others have concrete panels, others a mix of both, one even has “bricks” which is actually painted concrete. As New Yorkers there is a sort of jadedness towards all the development. “Of course buildings are going up everywhere, this is New York.” The future is growing all around us.

But as I watch the building frenzy, I can’t help but wonder what these machines for living will look like after 10, 20 years of wear.

I used to take the 4 train to the north Bronx to take classes at Lehman College. When I had time in between classes I would walk around the Grand Concourse, that once imperial boulevard that long ago gave way to the needs of high speed car travel. Lining the Concourse are block after block of pre-war apartment homes. The Bronx was developed as an urban suburb and most of the development that followed the extension of the subway lines were large apartment houses for the middle classes fleeing the crowded tenement houses of Manhattan. Like the luxury condo towers rising all around, these were built en-mass and reflected the styles of the day. They too were luxurious, maybe not by todays standards (in New York “luxury” means a doorman and in-building laundry), but they did offer much more space and contained the newest technological advances in urban living of the time.

But as time wore on and the next generation became wealthier they moved on to greener pastures. With white flight and the original owners retiring to Florida or the Southwest, many of these buildings began to become occupied by the lower class, new immigrants and poor blacks. These once fresh, clean apartment buildings quickly began to show their age as the new tenants were unable to afford the upkeep. Once seen as a glimmering step up, they now were seen as where the other half lived. Today you can just make out what once was when you look closely at the little details around the edges of the buildings, that is if they haven’t fallen off and been replaced with a quick stucco job.

So when I look at the new towers all I can think is what they will look like when they are no longer in vogue. What will age and neglect do to these relics of our time? What will BLUE look like when the the YUPies who fill it move to the newest gentrifying areas? What will it look like when poor new immigrants take it over and the windows start to fall out? All I can imagine is a vast sea of tall glass towers, dark and broken, dirty and scary. A forest of twisted trees, towering over once busy streets. When I see a new glass tower go up I imagine it once it has outlived its economic value for the rich and discarded like all the row houses that are now boarded up, the once fashionable hotels which are now rooming houses, and the once shining modern towers that are now “projects”.

Off in the distance in Brooklyn, right past the new tower going up in Williamsburgh along Kent St, I can see the last generations building boom. Like a far away mountain range they rise, the Marcy Projects. Looming large and dark they are now the place where we send those who have failed at the American dream or those who have just begun the climb. What will our new projects look like when they are no longer filled with those at the top but with those at the bottom?