The idea for the Lower Manhattan Expressway, or LOMEX as it was known, which was to run the length of Broome Street, was first put forth in the 1930’s and gained support in the 1950’s and 1960’s and would have razed most of what is now SoHo and Little Italy. If Robert Moses and his cohorts had had their way, SoHo would never have existed, and the whole area of lower Manhattan between the Holland Tunnel and the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges would most certainly have shared the same fate as the South Bronx after the Cross Bronx Expressway (another Moses project) was built. But thanks to community activists, led by Jane Jacobs, as well as Julie Finch and Artists Against the Expressway, opposition to the proposed highway connecting New Jersey and Brooklyn (via some of the most historically significant areas of New York City) killed the project, and the highway was never built.