Humor 🤣 Let's give NUMTOTS the vapors

[Maister]

 

[DVD]

I'm just here to confuse the numtots. I live in a fine suburban house in a cul-de-sac, but I take the bus to work. How is this possible?

 

[Dan]

OOH! OOH! OOH! Can I play?

You never know what's going to happen on Black Friday.

Don't you hate fake dormers?

Authentic Italian cuisine, FREE BREADSTICKS!, and plentiful parking.

At least it's the 310 area code.

Eatin' good in the neighborhood.

\
This neighborhood.

I'll just leave a happy middle class white family here.

Karen and Doug are so proud of Kayden! Live laugh love!

Moses only parted the Red Sea. Robert Moses parted neighborhoods in New York City!

 

[Dan]

Who says we have to limit it to static photos?
















(Disclaimer: I do not endorse any of this as examples of best practice in urban planning.)

 

[DVD]

I just saw something on CBS Sunday Morning praising the engineering marvel of "The Stack" in LA

 

[JNA]

I just saw something on CBS Sunday Morning praising the engineering marvel of "The Stack" in LA

Story Link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/almanac-the-los-angeles-freeways-stack/

 

[Dan]

Oh noes!

 

[Maister]

I don't know where you find half this shit, Dan, but dayum!!

 

[The Terminator]

Thread sent to NUMTOT cofounder.

 

[jsk1983]

No mention of landlords?

 

[Dan]

No mention of landlords?

Landlords are bad. So is the "American dream" of owner-occupied housing.

 

[Doohickie]

Landlords are bad. So is the "American dream" of owner-occupied housing.

 

[Dan]

Greetings from [fill in the blank]!

 

[Doohickie]

New York State Thruway at Maryvale Drive (now the Kensington Expressway) in Cheektowaga, NY. There were actually several houses that remained inside the cloverleaf at first. I attended Maryvale Elementary School near the right edge of the picture, a little above center.

You can see the homes in the cloverleaf on Historic Aerials. Search for "14225" (the zip code) and the interchange will be at the top of the frame. Look at aerial views from 1966 and prior and you can see the homes in the interchange. This piecture is from the early 1960s. By 1963 you can see in Historic Aerials some of the land behind the elementary school had already been acquired for the expressway. There are no indications of that yet in this picture (although it could could be just off frame). By 1966 the expressway construction was apparent in Historic Aerials and the homes were still there but obviously about to be demo'ed.

 

[Doohickie]

Welcome to Fort Worth, Texas

 

[jsk1983]

New York State Thruway at Maryvale Drive (now the Kensington Expressway) in Cheektowaga, NY. There were actually several houses that remained inside the cloverleaf at first. I attended Maryvale Elementary School near the right edge of the picture, a little above center.

You can see the homes in the cloverleaf on Historic Aerials. Search for "14225" (the zip code) and the interchange will be at the top of the frame. Look at aerial views from 1966 and prior and you can see the homes in the interchange. This piecture is from the early 1960s. By 1963 you can see in Historic Aerials some of the land behind the elementary school had already been acquired for the expressway. There are no indications of that yet in this picture (although it could could be just off frame). By 1966 the expressway construction was apparent in Historic Aerials and the homes were still there but obviously about to be demo'ed.

Given the age of the houses surrounding the expressway I assume some were only standing a few years until eminent domain came a knocking?

 

[WSU MUP Student]

Triggered!

Greetings from [fill in the blank]!


View attachment 50015

(In normal times) I drive past this view multiple times a week and I actually like it, especially in the early evening when the sun hits hose shiny glass towers just right!

 

[Doohickie]

Given the age of the houses surrounding the expressway I assume some were only standing a few years until eminent domain came a knocking?

That would be my guess. They were knocked down when I was a little kid and before I was aware of such things. I don't really remember Maryvale Drive going through; I just remember the Kensington Expressway.

 

[Dan]

Given the age of the houses surrounding the expressway I assume some were only standing a few years until eminent domain came a knocking?

EDIT: a few more details.

The route of the future New York State Thruway (the 90) was fixed in 1944. However, construction on the highway wouldn't begin for about 8-10 more years. A 1946 plan for arterial roads in the Buffalo area set out the approximate route of the "Airline Expressway", what would become the Kensington Expressway. In Cheektowaga, the Airline Expressway was to follow the right-of-way of Maryvale Drive.

Some time in the late 1940s, in the area around where Maryvale Drive crossed the Niagara Lockport & Ontario Power Company transmission line, a developer subdivided the underlying land, and builders put up small starter houses. This happened despite widespread knowledge and press about the planned Thruway and Airline Expressway route, and the location of the interchange between the two. There was strong support for an alternative mainline Thruway route through the East Side of Buffalo, so the routes of Buffalo's future expressway network wasn't 100% certain.

When work began on the Thruway and Exit 52 in the early 1950s. many of the "doll houses" in the right-of-way, still fairly new, were plowed under The houses in the middle of the interchange, fronting on what was then Maryvale Drive, were the survivors. (The site was once part of the huge land holdings of George F. Urban.) Construction wouldn't begin on the Kensington Expressway through Cheektowga until the 1960s, so for about 10 years Thruway Exit 51 was the Maryvale Drive exit.

Elsewhere in Cheektowaga, there were hundreds of existing building lots in the route of the future Thruway. These lots were the result of speculative subdivision during the boom of the 1910s and 1920s. The Depression hit, and Erie County found itself the owner of tens of thousands of lots throughout the region thanks to tax foreclosures. The county gradually sold off the vacant lots, including many in the future Thruway ROW, starting in the late 1930s. (The county lot sales would continue into the 1960s. It's the reason why many of Buffalo's mid-century suburban areas have a grid street pattern -- the lots were created decades earlier.)

 

[DVD]

I drive Black Canyon Freeway all the time. That's an old picture, but to give the NUMS some more problems, the cross roads are a mile apart. That's not a lot of housing density! Still isn't today.

 

[Dan]

You know those slow TV videos that feature cab viewmvideos of long train rides through Norway? Here's the Canadian equivalent.


The video starts just before the local/express split.