Backhoe Gulch: Periphery at the Center

The confluence where the BQE merges with the Gowanus Expressway, the Prospect Expressway, Hamilton Avenue, and several side streets is a spectacular cluster-fuck. The intricacy of this monstrous intersection is breathtaking, in part because it’s less than 100 yards from actual residences. (I can only imagine the calloused psyches that have had to adapt their sleeping and dreaming habits to this auto-saturated environment. To call the traffic relentless is an understatement.)


In the middle of this triangle-shaped juncture sits the grassy knoll called Backhoe Gulch. At first glance—from a passing car most likely—it looks like nothing more than a grubby little traffic island, a swath of negative space that is simply a by-product of the roads that surround it. It’s true that Backhoe Gulch is a mean and trashy place, but it’s also an officially designated park, which means it’s open to the public. I’ve been there a few times, but I couldn’t imagine seeing anyone else there. (Given the location, and its aura as a body-dumping ground, I think I’d be wary if I did.)


For all its crusty insignificance, Backhoe Gulch is one of the most exhilarating places I know. That’s because of the noise, the strange feeling of being somewhere that’s obscure yet congested and centrally located, and especially the unique vantage points. Backhoe Gulch affords a view of the city drivers might get if time froze and they could blithely stroll down the highway on foot. At the top of the hill, you can safely stand right beside the Prospect Expressway, just a few feet from the passing cars. The layered views of Gowanus, Brooklyn Heights, and Manhattan are like no others. The southern direction offers an ideal view of the bizarre structure that connects the Gowanus Expressway with the Prospect Expressway and the BQE. It’s a brutalist masterpiece as well as a feat of highway engineering.


There’s always a place for pastoral retreat—to flee the city’s onslaught and commune with nature. Backhoe Gulch, though, is another park experience. It provides an opportunity to become one with the flow of massive intertwining traffic arteries and to pulse with that distinctly urban lifeblood of accelerated kinetic frenzy.

Footbridge Haiku

The highway stops for no man
the car-less trudge
over streams of traffic

Where the Highway Meets the Street

The mighty Gowanus
frames the landscape
cuts across the horizon

Three Views of the Gowanus Expressway

“The construction of the Gowanus Parkway [in 1941], laying a concrete slab on top of lively, bustling Third Avenue, buried the avenue in shadow, and when the parkway was completed, the avenue was cast forever into darkness and gloom, and its bustle and life were gone forever. And through that shadow, down on the ten-lane surface road beneath the parkway, rumbled regiments, brigades, divisions of huge tractor-trailer trucks, engines gunning and backfiring, horns blasting, brakes screeching . . . And from above, from the parkway itself, came the continual surging, dull, surf-like roar, punctuated, of course, by more backfires and blasts and screeches, of the cars passing overhead. Once Third Avenue had been friendly. Now it was frightening.”

The Powerbroker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974), by Robert Caro


“The Gowanus Expressway gets a bad rap, deservedly so. I mean, during rush hour it's probably the largest elevated parking lot in the world. But there’s an upside to it as well. In some ways the Gowanus serves as a natural boundary, separating the industrial part of Sunset Park from the residential part. And that has helped to preserve some of the industry. Sunset Park is very much an immigrant community, and it’s unique in that a large percentage of the people who live here work here, and I think that is special, and I think that needs to be preserved.”

From an interview with a Sunset Park Community leader (2006)


By any conventional standard, whether aesthetic, environmental, or cultural, the Gowanus Expressway is a monstrosity. Still, I find leisurely walks along Third Avenue enjoyable and inspiring. There’s something arresting about the whole brutalist structure—especially those green pillars—and the peculiar commercial life that flourishes beneath it. The Gowanus evinces a powerful idea: however unlovely a thing is, it might still be capable of evoking powerful feelings within a person and providing a glimpse of the sublime. If something can stimulate a person in this way, and do it consistently, it could be said to possess intrinsic beauty. Intrinsic beauty elevates a thing or a collection of things (like a neighborhood); intrinsic beauty is a mark of power. This idea goes to the heart of explaining Brooklyn’s singular vitality. It isn’t just a diverse area with some typically charming elements (Brooklyn Heights, Prospect Park, etc.) and some other elements that are opposite (like the Gowanus). It is a place where everything meshes into a totality, where all is subordinate to the overarching mystique and profound beauty that is Brooklyn.