Ode to the Humble Footbridge

Over traffic stream
the car-less trudge
the highway stops for no one


Bridging the gash (Hicks St. nr. Summit St.)


Above it all


The footbridge across the highway is a pedestrian refuge in the midst of the autosphere. The Summit Street Pedestrian Bridge in Red Hook spans the sunken BQE down below (the “Ditch”). When you’re on the bridge, you’re above the traffic, above the noise from the ditch below—that surf-like roar, with the blaring horns and screeching brakes. It drifts up to where you are, filtered by distance and tamed into a calming drone . . . Rush hour seen through the chain link fence is a panoramic glimpse of the city full on. Sunbeams reflect off glass and chrome, darting across windshields and spinning hubcaps—that mad kinetic frenzy! Looking over the Ditch, you feel like you’re commanding a perch all your own, above it all—ruthless velocity, concrete and steel.


Over and under (Hamilton Ave. nr. Henry St.)

Date with a highway (feel the vibrations)


Tunnel to purgatory


Another footbridge in Red Hook cuts across a 10- or 12-lane stretch where the Gowanus Expressway, the Battery Tunnel, and the BQE converge. It’s a jerry-built structure that goes over multiple roadbeds and under two others. Usually it’s bereft of pedestrians, except during certain parts of the day. When it’s empty, it’s bleak, a slab of concrete strewn with empty beer cans and who knows what—maybe a filthy pile of clothes or the odd used condom, everything coated with a dusting of exhaust fumes. It’s a blighted place, like a tunnel to purgatory. At one point, though, you pass under a road just a few feet above. You can feel the swarming traffic, the mechanical flow. The vibrations engulf you, allowing you to become intimate with the highway, perhaps more than a (living) pedestrian ever could be.


Walking on traffic


Any feelings of intimacy or omnipotence that may strike on the footbridge are usually fleeting, a result of lightheadedness perhaps. Back on the ground, one can see clearly that the footbridges of Red Hook symbolize the dominant place of highways in the neighborhood. They’re enduring reminders of the violence done by Robert Moses to expand his auto-centric vision into Red Hook and all over Brooklyn.

Moses was the Stalin of concrete, the “Master Builder” who built the BQE, the Gowanus Expressway, and so much more. The Ditch, like many of his projects, involved massive displacement—about 500 houses were demolished in the early 1950s. More significantly, it cut Red Hook off from the rest of south Brooklyn. It left a Mosaic landscape—a legacy of truncated avenues and bisected streets, more foe than friend to the walker trying gamely to navigate the broken topography.

SLIDESHOW – Footbridges & Pedestrian Tunnels (Flickr)

Brooklyn Playgrounds (No. 2)

The Brooklyn playground is a functional thing, often installed (seemingly as an afterthought) beneath ramps and overpasses and next to expressways. This is a legacy of Robert Moses, whose auto-centric vision of New York melded transportation and leisure in a perverse way that was oblivious to humanity and aesthetics.


Nonetheless, this is the landscape we’ve inherited, and it’s oddly stimulating. Maybe this is a result of the collision between Moses’ anti-humanist vision and the power of social adaptability, that assertion of humanity in the face of hostile forces.


This hopeful attitude is diminished, though, when one sees these concrete-and-metal-filled spaces barren of people (as they often are). Then it becomes apparent that there’s really something uninviting about these playgrounds, these footnotes to the highway.


I still like the highway playground, in the same way I might like an old dysfunctional radio that looks just right on the window sill. But I mostly appreciate the highway playground because it’s essentially, undeniably Brooklyn.

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.