|
|
| Re: Set Your VCR (386055) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > SubChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
Re: Set Your VCR |
|
|
Posted by BrooklynBus on Mon Feb 12 18:49:02 2007, in response to Re: Set Your VCR, posted by RIPTA42HopeTunnel on Mon Feb 12 17:22:09 2007. Chris:"You are talking about the Expressway some decades later, after the ROW was already there for the Gowanas on 3rd. Hope Tunnel: No, the ROW was taken for the Gowanus Parkway. According to nycroads.com, placing the elevated highway on an existing elevated structure was more likely to be approved by the City Council than constructing a new elevated structure." Chris, you are wrong. I am not talking about the Expressway some decades later. This is what the link to nycroads.com says: "Since the Gowanus Parkway was to be constructed atop a pre-existing elevated facility, Moses had little trouble getting his project approved by the New York City Council." (With his power, he still could have gotten a new road approved along Second Avenue if he wanted to, maybe with a little more difficulty.) "However, the Gowanus Parkway would require more land for a wide roadway and entrance-exit ramps. This required the demolition of many homes and businesses along Third Avenue, a tightly knit block of Northern and Western European immigrants. In his 1974 biography The Power Broker, Robert A. Caro argued that Moses' highway created a "Chinese wall" that accelerated the process of deterioration that began two blocks west, along the waterfront terminals. He also points out that residents fought to have the highway placed closer to the waterfront to protect the neighborhood. The Gowanus Parkway project, including the widened Third Avenue for local truck traffic, was completed on October 1, 1941." So homes and long established businesses had to be demolished for the original Parkway. It wasn't simply placed atop the el pillars. The Expressway just meant even more demolition of homes. "In 1955, both the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) and the Federal Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) recommended that the existing Gowanus Parkway be converted to an expressway... Two years later, the Board of Estimate approved the expansion of the existing four-lane parkway into a six-lane expressway, providing access to the proposed Verrazano-Narrows Bridge...Soon after the expressway conversion was approved, work began on widening the elevated section from two to three lanes in each direction, and eliminating some entrance and exit ramps. More demolition was required along the Third Avenue corridor: approximately 200 buildings were condemned for the expressway expansion." |
|
|
|