A model of the unbuilt Lower Manhattan Expressway is on display at the Cooper Union. (Barb Choit photo)
From 1967 to 1972, the architect Paul Rudolph labored on a project of colossal proportions—a highway that would have trisected Lower Manhattan and been lined with a series of astonishing, washboard-shaped towers that grew taller as they approached the island’s edge. Called the Lower Manhattan Expressway, the project would have been linked to the subway system with elevators that reached up to garages, moving sidewalks, public spaces, and apartments. Rudolph, dean of Yale University’s architecture school from 1958 to 1964, envisioned movement as a unifying urban experience.
The highway was never built, of course. But now two architecture students at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art—with help from 21 classmates, a Rice University summer intern, and two students at the New York Institute of Technology—have recreated it in a 33-by-16-foot model for a Cooper Union exhibition that also features some 30 full-scale drawings, prints, and photos. The exhibition continues through November 14. —Lawrence Biemiller
_small.jpg)
One Response to Cooper Union Students Build a Highway That Crosses Manhattan
jesselemisch - October 8, 2010 at 11:16 pm
Huh? This account seems to be making somehow heroic the Expressway that would have destroyed much of Manhattan life if not stopped. It is interesting that Rudolph (of the brutal and unuseable A and A Bldg at Yale)should have been so insensitive to the social implications of his work.This cries out for a fuller critical account.