WHEN traffic czar Robert Moses commissioned the Interborough Parkway in 1930, which connects Pennsylvania and Jamaica Avenues in Brooklyn with the Grand Central Parkway in Kew Gardens, it was along with the Bronx River Parkway the earliest such road built in the five boroughs, though the Southern Parkway east of NYC was opened earlier. Moses’ parkways all originally had a suburban or downright rural appearance; with wooden railposts and “woodie” lampposts, some of which still stand on the Island and in Westchester.
The Interborough, now of course called the Jackie Robinson Parkway, runs through a number of cemeteries in the mid-island cemetery belt which arose along the hilly area in Brooklyn and Queens. There are 17 separate cemeteries in the belt and I’m not sure which one is pictured here in a 1932 shot by E.E. Rutter. What I can say is, it was a pity that traffic over time became much busier and the Interborough’s original fancy concrete railings and overpasses have long vanished, though the Jackie’s innumerable twists and turns, built to get the parkway around frequent inclines were it to be built straight, are still in place. The road had to be widened over time, displacing even more gravesites than had been moved when the Interborough was first constructed.
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5/26/22