My posts will be intermittent for awhile as I recover from surgery, but I am feeling better.
My father was just as much a photo buff as I turned out to be, and while the Gowanus Expressway and Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge were going up very close to our apartment building in the early 1960s, he was there to document its construction. Actually he has the most comprehensive collection of the trenches that were dug in Bay Ridge where the expressway was going to be built, which I presented on one of FNY’s most popular pages, Bridge in the Back Yard.
As Gay Talese recounted in his recounting of the bridge’s construction, “The Bridge,” quite a few families were displaced as the Gowanus Expressway trench was dug between 66th Street and the bridge approach south of 92nd Street. The pathway was along 7th Avenue, which, when it was laid out in the late 1800s, angled away from Bay Ridge’s other numbered avenues, and then between Gatling and Dahlgren Places, two of Bay Ridge’s military-themed street names. Buildings across the street from our apartment house on Fort Hamilton Parkway were eliminated by the diktat of NYC’s traffic czar Robert Moses; at this late date, I don’t know if fair compensation for the displaced was paid.
The above photo is a curio of the period, taken by my father a few days before the expressway and bridge opening in 1964 and what we see here is state of the art in road construction for the year. The expressway boasted gleaming cylindrical light posts with mercury-bulbed GE M400s, built a at a time when most streets were still lit by incandescent bulbs in ornate cast-iron poles. The highway signs were green, a new color for them at the time, with the I-278 shield and Highway Gothic spaced lettering, still a feature today despite a brief flirtation with Clearview in the 2010s. The 84th Street pedestrian bridge (another one was placed at 72nd Street) and apartment house in the background are still in place. You can see the bare sides of several homes on 84th and 85th Streets that avoided “execution.”
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9/21/23
12 comments
The person getting out of the car might be Robert Moses himself. He never had a driver’s license (irony of ironies) and needed a chauffeur, so that could be why he’s getting out on the passenger side. Guess he wanted to inspect his handiwork before it was turned over to the masses. But we will never know for sure. Kudos to your father.
I was in my teens at the time. There was outrage for the residents that were displaced. Perhaps even more so for the original idea of building an elevated approach along the Belt Parkway in front of Shore Road and obliterating a stunning view. Not many people admired Robert Moses.
Since Moses’ namesake parted the Red Sea,I guess he figured on doing one
better by parting Bay Ridge
“…I don’t know if fair compensation for the displaced was paid.”
According to Robert Caro in his book about Moses “The Power Broker” – it wasn’t! Nor were were the displaced families offered any help finding new residences. My uncle lived on 76th St just East of Fort Hamilton Parkway, and he sweated for a while wondering whether his house was in the path. Meanwhile, I watched the Brooklyn tower of the Verrazzano Bridge going up from homeroom class at New Utrecht HS in the early 60’s. The sun reflected off its red lead paint. I went to college on Staten Island, and it was a 2 hour commute from Brooklyn – 2 busses, the 69th St Ferry, and then another bus. Coming back on the ferry Friday night there was a lot of talk about the bridge opening the next day. Then on Saturday Nov 21st, the bridge opened and the ferry was discontinued. I kind of missed it at first, but the bridge bus cut 30 minutes off my commute, so I couldn’t complain!
Wonder who the guy is in that 1959 Plymouth? If it was Robert Moses, I’d bet he’d be driven around in an Imperial or Caddy and not a lowly Plymouth. Dig those fins and the “toilet seat” spare tire cover on the trunk!
Well,we all can say what we want about Robert Moses but I can still conjure in
my mind the smell of hot dogs grilling at the Pavillion at Jones Beach mixed with
the smell of salt air.Thanks, Mr. Moses.
Ditto, Chris
Hoping your recovery continues and you’re starrying to feel better. Thank you for your detailed writeup
I read Gay Talese’s excellent book. I often took the bus to the construction site to see what was going on. And like you, I took the bus over the bridge on the first day. The early sixties was the “last hurrah” for highway construction in NYC, such as for the Verrazzano Bridge and for the World’s Fair.
I grew up in Dyker Heights. I was a freshman in high school the day the bridge opened. Most of Bay Ridge and other neighborhoods were on Shore Road that day. I was sad to see the ferry service stop. On hot summer days, my friends and I would catch the ferry at the 69th street pier. Stand outside and catch the cool breezes. Not long after someone nicknamed the bridge the guinea gangplank. Live in California now so I don’t know it that term is still around.
Some of us still call it the “Guinea Gangplank”, but its meaning has been lost over the last 60 years…
Every once in a while I love to get on your site and catch up! I lived in Dyker Heights when the bridge was constructed and there are some personal reminiscences. My father’s cousin lived in a big house that was demolished to dig the highway approach I also knwo a good friend of my dad who was mentioned in Talese’s book. Dr. Santo Coppola (a good friend who went to medical school with my dad) was the emergency physician for American Bridge during the construction of :”the bridge” and emergencies would be brought to the Victory Memorial Hospital because it was nearby. Talese recounted a story where a worker was in the emergency room for some injury like a heavy bolt dropped through his face and “Dr. Santo” (that’s how I knew him!) patched him up and he went back to work.