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Filling in the Hudson

Imagine a world where Manhattan and New Jersey were no longer divided by a river, a world where the two states were fused together by a dried-up wasteland. That vision was proposed in 1934 as part of a plan to fill in ten square miles of the Hudson River. This plan would have been an engineering marvel, and was proposed in an effort to alleviate the city’s growing housing and congestion problems, which were deemed to be “threatening to devour the city’s civilization like a frankenstein monster.” The cost of bringing New Yorkers and New Jerseyites closer together in 1934: $1 billion. Keeping them apart: priceless.