Structural supports beneath the Gowanus Expressway. This section of elevated highway, built in the 1950s, cuts through, or rather over, Sunset Park and Gowanus Canal. I'm not sure how high it is, but the nearby Smith-9th St. elevated train station rises to 87.5 feet (26.7 m). That's about six stories tall! The height allowed for tall-mast ships on the Gowanus Canal. It's been a long time since any tall-mast ships went on the Gowanus Canal, but these two towering spans remain.
It was, of course, one of the pet projects of Robert Moses, who looooved to build highways cutting right through cities. More than 200 buildings were condemned to make way for it. In 1959, Lewis Mumford wrote in the New Yorker:
"At the very moment . . . that we have torn down our elevated railways, because of their spoilage of urban space, our highway engineers are using vast sums of public money to restore the same nuisance in an even noisier and more insistent form. But what is Brooklyn to the highway engineer - except a place to go through rapidly, at whatever necessary sacrifice of peace and amenity by its inhabitants?"
The irony is that this whole highway is now known for constant gridlock, at all times of day and night. No one thinks of it as a way to get through Brooklyn rapidly.
It's also been deteriorating for decades from the constant traffic and harsh weather. There are various plans to renovate it, or replace it with a new span, or tear it down and dig a tunnel along its route. But each plan would cost billions of dollars, and necessitate taking a central traffic artery out of commission for years. In 1973, a dump truck fell through the elevated West Side Highway to the streets below. It'll probably take something similar to spur any action on the Gowanus Viaduct.
The initial pencil sketch . . .
