Urban Renewal: The Rush to Clear

After World War II, the United States entered into a frenzied period of demolition and clearance in the name of “Urban Renewal.” The policy was to clear a district of all slums at once in order to present large sites which would attract private developers. The term "urban renewal" originates from the Housing Act of …

The Federal-Aid Highway Acts

As the popularity of the automobile grew in America, so did a desire for many for bigger, faster, more direct roads. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938 In the late 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt expressed interest in construction of a network of three east-west and three north-south super-highways as a means of putting people …

The Building of the BQE

The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is not your typical expressway.  It bends its way through Brooklyn and Queens like a snake, burrowing and then rising and sometimes even hiding below the landscape. Driving along the BQE, rows of 19th Century housing and large warehouses pass by below on stretches of elevated highway.  And as it cuts deep through …

1964-1965 World’s Fair, Flushing Meadows, Queens

For two summers, visitors to the 1964-65 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens, celebrated the dawn of the space age and technology that would come to change the American experience. Opening day was April 22, 1964 and the fair brought enthusiasm to a nation still reeling from the assassination of President Kennedy five months earlier. …