Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>> NARRATOR: Of all the federal
projects under Robert Moses's
control, none would have more
devastating consequences for the
city and its people or instill
more rage against its executor
than the Cross Bronx Expressway,
a 225-foot-wide concrete trench,
seven miles long, that would
carve a path of destruction New
Yorkers would never forget.
>> CARO: This used to be a
neighborhood.
The neighborhood was called East
Tremont in the Bronx in New
York.
The heart of it was where this
road runs behind me, the Cross
Bronx Expressway.
It was predominantly Jewish.
There was also Irish and Germans
in it and some blacks.
It was a neighborhood where
everybody knew everybody else.
It was a community.
It was a place with a heart.
Robert Moses tore this heart
out.
>> BERMAN: The Cross Bronx
Expressway goes through about 12
or 15 different neighborhoods
and it just, like, went through
the center of a great many.
And, I mean, the idea was that
it was built on a straight line.
And there was no account of, you
know, who the people are and
what they're doing.
There was no question of, "Can
we work this highway into
existing life?"
This question never came up in
the 1940s or '50s.
They had the power to build in
straight lines, and they just
did.
>> SUAREZ: These were still
intact communities.
People worked.
People kept up their properties.
People did business where they
lived.
This was a place where you did
your marketing locally.
You did your business locally.
You got your first Holy
Communion, read your haftarah
for your bar mitzvah.
It all happened right there.
It was a culturally and
materially self-sufficient world
in a lot of ways.valley
that you see here was, of
course, filled with apartment
houses.
So they had to demolish scores
of six- and seven-story
apartment houses.
But that was really nothing
compared to the problems.
They were going to have to blast
through the ridge there.
They knew that building this
road was going to take ten or 12
years.
In fact, it took 12 years.
They knew they couldn't
interrupt the subway service, so
they were going to have to keep
that subway line running while
they blasted through that ridge.
Also, inside that ridge is one
of the world's largest storm
sewer mains, gas mains,
electric lines, telegraph
cables, sewers of all types, a
whole mass of utility lines.
Moses was going to have to ram
this road through there while
keeping all those things in
operation.
>> BERMAN: I remember standing
on the ramparts of the concourse
and watching the engineering
job, which was quite magnificent
and sublime because you could
see the destruction in one
direction.
Everything was being smashed to
the east.
And to the west nothing had been
done yet, so it looked like a
completely intact city.
And yet you knew it was like the
artillery shells were going to
come down on it, you know, in a
year, in two years, in a month.
They didn't tell us.
>> CARO: And all I could think
of was that this didn't have to
be.
Now, that very afternoon as it
happened, I had an interview
with Robert Moses.
And I was asking him about this
expressway, and I was trying to
find a polite way to address the
subject.
And I said, "Was it perhaps more
difficult to build an expressway
through a crowded city than to
build a parkway on empty Long
Island?"
He said, "Oh, no.
No, not at all, not really."
I said, "Well, what about the
Cross Bronx Expressway?"
He said, "Oh, no.
There was no real trouble up
there."
I said, "Well, was there
hardship for the people?"
He said, "No, no."
He said, "They just stirred up
the animals there.
So I just held fast, and that
was all we had to do."
And of course it was all he had
to do, because that was the
reality of political power in
New York at that time.
>> BERMAN: I stood on the
ramparts of the concourse and
said, "Someday I'll get that
***."
And there were a lot of other
people, too, who were standing
there with me and watching the
job and said, "We hate that
creep.
Someday we'll get him."
I mean, he'd made a lot of
enemies over the years.
You know, people who were
willing to do anything to get
him.
>> MOSES: We don't pay to much
attention to the critics.
They never build anything.
No critic ever built anything in
my knowledge.
And they don't bother us.