--- description: These concept drawings, which are presented in a new documentary about Jane Jacobs, show NYC as it could have been without her intervention. title: Jane Jacobs, Robert Moses and the NYC That Could Have Been image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc5439cf31fab8120/6988c3128fd2ee34fc3569c3/robert-moses-lomex-02.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [History](/section/history/) ## History Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [movies](/tag/movies/) ## movies Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Manhattan Almost Had a Highway Running Across It. Here's What It Would Have Looked Like  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 21, 2017 3:00 PM CUT  Concept renderings of Robert Moses' proposed LOMEX (Lower Manhattan Expressway). Concept renderings of Robert Moses' proposed LOMEX (Lower Manhattan Expressway).Library of Congress— Courtesy of IFC Films  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 21, 2017 3:00 PM CUT In the new documentary _Citizen Jane: Battle for the City_, opening this Friday on theaters in New York and available on demand, filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer (_Valentino: The Last Emperor_) tells the story of urban activist Jane Jacobs and her fight against the plans of developer Robert Moses — in particular, Moses’ desire to run an expressway right across lower Manhattan, which was [hatched in the 1940s](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1946/10/14/93158864.html?pageNumber=24 "undefined") during a period when urban renewal was dominated by efforts to standardize, modernize and make room for cars.  Mrs. Jane Jacobs, chairman of the Comm. to save the West Village holds up documentary evidence at press conference at Lions Head Restaurant at Hudson & Charles Streets. World Telegram & Sun photo by Phil Stanziola. Library of Congress/courtesy of IFC Films The project, supporters argued, would help with traffic problems and speeding the commute across the busy island. But, as the plan developed, a journalist named Jane Jacobs turned herself into an urban activist. Jacobs, who has been the subject of several recent books timed to the centennial of her 1916 birth, gained fame in urban-planning circles with her then-controversial 1961 book _The Death and Life of Great American Cities_. She argued that the area Moses saw as ripe for a redo was a vibrant neighborhood of homes and businesses that would be destroyed and divided by the plan. These drawings are concept renderings of the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOMEX), showing just how much the city would have been changed. In a 1966 cover story about the American city, TIME [characterized](http://time.com/vault/issue/1966-03-04/page/33/ "undefined") the dispute as “a 20-year-old controversy \[that\] still swirls about a proposed Lower Manhattan expressway while the decaying area through which it is to run decays further because no one wants to risk improving properties that may yet be destroyed.”  Robert Moses and Mayor Wagner Walter Albertin/Library of Congress/courtesy of IFC Films In other words, part of the reason why the area could be characterized by supporters of the expressway as a nothing-worth-saving area of blight was that, since 1941, residents had wondered whether their homes and businesses were about to be destroyed. Look at any map of New York these days and it’s easy to see who won the dispute. Jacobs, who was arrested at a 1968 hearing about the LOMEX, convinced the city to abandon the project once and for all.  Concept renderings of Robert Moses' proposed LOMEX (Lower Manhattan Expressway). Library of Congress— Courtesy of IFC Films  Concept renderings of Robert Moses' proposed LOMEX (Lower Manhattan Expressway). Library of Congress— Courtesy of IFC Films  Concept renderings of Robert Moses' proposed LOMEX (Lower Manhattan Expressway). Library of Congress— Courtesy of IFC Films  Concept renderings of Robert Moses' proposed LOMEX (Lower Manhattan Expressway). Library of Congress— Courtesy of IFC Films  Concept renderings of Robert Moses' proposed LOMEX (Lower Manhattan Expressway). Library of Congress— Courtesy of IFC Films  Concept renderings of Robert Moses' proposed LOMEX (Lower Manhattan Expressway). Library of Congress— Courtesy of IFC Films  Concept renderings of Robert Moses' proposed LOMEX (Lower Manhattan Expressway). 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