The Cross Bronx Expressway: Robert Moses's Most Consequential Cut

The Cross Bronx Expressway, the stretch of Interstate Ninety-Five that cuts across the South Bronx to the George Washington Bridge, is among the most consequential pieces of road in American urban history. It was built between nineteen forty-eight and nineteen seventy-three under the direction of Robert Moses, New York City's parks commissioner and power broker, who had the ability to condemn property, relocate residents, and build highways through neighborhoods without meaningful democratic accountability. The Cross Bronx displaced as many as sixty thousand people, though estimates vary widely, from communities in the South Bronx that had been stable working-class and middle-class neighborhoods.

The expressway required demolishing about sixty blocks of housing. The displacement destabilized the surrounding neighborhoods. The South Bronx in the nineteen seventies became a symbol of urban disinvestment and arson, landlords burning their own buildings for insurance as the neighborhood lost value.

The phrase the Bronx is burning entered the language. The neighborhood has partially recovered. The area immediately around the Cross Bronx has not recovered fully, and continues to bear the health consequences of the traffic the highway generates, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, asthma rates significantly higher than the city average.

Robert Moses built highways across the country that are still in use. The people he displaced are mostly not remembered. The highways are named for other people.