Grand Theatre

Joe Vogel on April 19, 2013 at 2:43 pm

Sara D. Roosevelt Parkway was the result of the demolition of the blocks between Chrystie and Forsyth Streets, from Canal Street to Houston Street. Shortly before this project got underway, all the buildings along the east side of Allen Street, two blocks east of Forsyth Street, from Canal to Houston were demolished, and Allen Street was widened.

In the exuberant days of the late 1920s, it was thought by the city’s planners that Allen Street could become a broad boulevard in the manner of certain avenues in Paris, but lined with tall, luxurious apartment blocks, like Park Avenue north of Grand Central Station. A dubious idea at best, given the surrounding neighborhood, but the onset of the depression put an end to the plan in any case. With today’s less grandiose approach to planning, the buildings lost to those projects would probably now be far more valuable to the city than is the empty space the projects created.