On the BQE…

Reading through the Brooklyn Eagle Archives about the construction of what would become the BQE and it's interesting to see how the politics worked and how in-step not only the media, but the entire NYC government were with Moses. I'm mostly curious tonight in finding out at what point the decision was made to build the Gowanus Parkway. References to it first appear in 1940 after construction was already underway, so when did they decide to build it and how was the decision to put it on 3rd Ave reported?

In January 1939 there was approval to extend the Belt Parkway north to Hamilton along 2nd Avenue. By March 1, there was "no provision yet made" for anything north of Owl's Head Park. Around the same time (March 6), the board of the Eagle gave full support for Moses plans for the Brooklyn Battery Bridge because there's no way the Brooklyn Bridge could accommodate cars, nor would anyone support a viaduct in through Downtown Brooklyn. (Love good foreshadowing.) A map published on March 16, 1939, does appear to show the Belt Parkway continuing along 2nd Avenue.

It's worth noting, I think, that most of the discussion around this time was focused on how the building of the Parkway and the Bridge would be good for the South Brooklyn Industrial sector, which is odd because trucks are not allowed on parkways...

The first mention of 3rd Avenue comes on May 26, 1939. The connection to the Brooklyn Battery Bridge would be made specifically at 3rd and Hamilton (the current nightmare intersection) but the connection to the Belt from there would be on 2nd *or* 3rd Ave. Keeping in mind that 2nd Ave was already approved, this is around the time that opposition to the Bridge was really starting to grow. While there was widespread approval earlier in the year, the paper is now starting to acknowledge that not everyone supports the idea.

By September of 1939, The Eagle was now reporting that Owl’s Head Park was the end of the Belt Parkway. All mentions to the Brooklyn Battery Bridge being part of the Parkway now apparently down the memory hole, Moses was given space to discuss how great it was that the entire Parkway would be finished by July 1940, right on time.

Around this time, the War Department reconsidered the approval of the Brooklyn Battery Bridge, considering it a potential national security risk. Their concern was simply that the bridge could easily be bombed, cutting off the Navy Yard in North Brooklyn from its sea access via the East River. In October, Mayor LaGuardia asked the president directly to force the approval of the bridge but to no avail. It’s here we see Sunset Park come back into play. On November 1, 1939, the editors of the Eagle say, “next year, when the Belt Parkway is completed up to Owl’s Head Park and it begins to discharge its hurrying streams of traffic from southern and eastern Brooklyn, Queens and points beyond into the ordinary street traffic at that point to struggle slowly on to Manhattan, the uproar of the entangled motorists will reach even to Washington.”

What’s interesting to me here is that it seems, at least apparently to the editors, that the entire Sunset Park section is contingent on the bridge. There’s no bridge, but there is a highway. Moses even gave up on the bridge around this time and started looking for ways to finance tunnel construction. So, what happened?

Well, Sunset Park comes back into the discussion with the tunnel option on November 22,1939. Despite the fact that the connection is no longer a bridge, the connection to Owl’s Head Park will still be elevated, for some reason. It’s formally announced in the paper on January 5, 1940, as an approach to the newly announced Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. No route was immediately announced, but the construction would be organized by the newly consolidated Triborough Bridge Authority, which absorbed the New York City Parkway Authority. On January 16, the elevated nature of the new but unnamed Parkway was explained as providing a route to the tunnel for industrial traffic below its spans, but the actual route was not described.

In February 1940, as plans came into clearer view, the paper reported that the “street-level truck route, under the highway [would] traverse the industrial area along the South Brooklyn Waterfront and lead to the Brooklyn outlet of the tunnel.” This is still not particularly clear but seeing as 3rd Avenue was not at this time fully industrial but was primarily a shopping, entertainment, and residential it seems as though at this point 2nd Avenue was still the primary option.

On March 12, 1940, the first reporting on 3rd Ave appears as opposition to Moses’ plan. The full article is included below.

The rest of the story is well-told in Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. The business owners and residents failed, despite support from the city comptroller and the stories in that section of the book are heartbreaking. Residents describe Third Avenue as the heart of the neighborhood, where everyone came together because they needed the train. The highway “tore [that heart] out” and replaced it with a truck route, turning 3rd Ave and its surrounding neighborhood streets from “a place for people” to “a place for cars.”

Part 2 of this series will cover the aftermath of its construction.