ASPHALT FOR BROADWAY

The New York Times
April 26, 1900

President Coogan Would Extend It from Battery to Central Park.

President Coogan of the Borough of Manhattan said yesterday that at an early date he would begin an active campaign to bring about the asphalting of Broadway from the Battery to Fifty-ninth Street.  A resolution has already been adopted by the Board of Public Improvements looking toward the repaving of the thoroughfare between Fourteenth and Forty-second Streets at an estimated cost of $290,000, and Mr. Coogan figures that it would require about $500,000 more to complete the improvement from Central Park to the southerly extremity of Manhattan Island.

Mr. Coogan said that he had received letters in support of the project from many of the heaviest owners of real estate along Broadway, and that it was his purpose to make a thorough canvass among other owners to see whether or not the plan met with general approval.  The asphalting of Broadway, Mr. Coogan believes, will facilitate the movement of goods between the wholesale and retail districts and will, in addition, relieve Fifth Avenue of much of the truck traffic which is causing residents along that thoroughfare a great deal of annoyance.  Besides, he says, it will add to the general cleanliness of the city and will remedy much of the noise.

"I am informed by experts," Mr. Coogan said, "that it will not cost more than $365,000 to pave Broadway with asphalt from the Battery to Fourteenth Street, while the section between Forty-second and Fifty-ninth Streets will not cost more than $170,000.  The intervening section has already been cared for by the Board of Public Improvements.  If we are to have a modern pavement on a part of Broadway, why not extend the improvement to the entire thoroughfare and make it what it pretends to be, the finest street in the new world."