An oft-reviled road
Day 10
Cross Bronx Expressway
January 9th, 2012
I'm walking every street in New York City.
This is the counterpoint to my walk across the US. Instead of seeing a million places for just a minute each, I'm going to spend a million minutes exploring just one place. By the time I finish walking every block of every street in all five boroughs, I'll have traveled more than 8,000 miles on foot — all within a single city. Details!
Email me at matt@imjustwalkin.com
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Maps: Progress | Photos
~9,954 miles walked
Your donations allow me to keep walking full-time. If you think what I'm doing is valuable and you'd like to offer some support, I would be very grateful. On the other hand, if you think I'm a worthless bum, feel free to email me and tell me to get a job, bozo. Both are excellent options!
More of that NYC bedrock. Is NYC built on a really big rock?
“Geologically, a predominant feature of the substrata of Manhattan is that the underlying bedrock base of the island rises considerably closer to the surface near the midtown district, dips down lower between 29th street and Canal street, then rises towards the surface again under the Financial district; this feature is the underlying reason for the clustering of skyscrapers in the Midtown and Financial district areas, and their absence over the intervening territory between these two areas, as their foundations can be sunk more securely into solid bedrock.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan#Geography
But other parts of Manhattan are landfill. The bedrock is probably why the island survived the erosion of the Hudson and East Rivers.
Thanks Alisa11!
I love to see this when driving in the city.
Buried in the rock above the highway is the D train subway line. Above the subway is the Grand Concourse, one of the larger roads in the Bronx. As a kid I watched all this being built. I remember not being able to comprehend why my neighborhood was being torn up for some kind of wacky underground highway.
I never though it possible to go under the Concourse, the subway and Jerome Ave which carries an El subway. It still seems crazy that they simply drew a line from the GW bridge to what was then the Bruckner Circle. There were a few deviations but not much considering how many people were displaced and the need to undo millions of years of serious geology. Look at it with Bing maps Bird’s Eye View. The idea behind this and many other city projects that required brute force was a single man, Robert Moses…he didn’t even drive a car!!