The View of Brooklyn From the Promenade

In this weekend’s Streetscapes column, Christopher Gray looked at how the Brooklyn Heights Promenade was a happy byproduct of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway construction in the early ’40s. Gray writes about how the Promenade affords a great view of the houses behind it in addition to the obviously great view of Lower Manhattan across the river:

The householders of the 1940s who lived on the bluff resented the intrusion of the road, even with a park on top, since they would lose privacy with the public traipsing back and forth along what had been their backyards. In 1943 Ferdinand Nitardy, an executive at the nearby Squibb pharmaceutical company, offered to waive condemnation costs for his rear yard if the Promenade was erased from the plan. But he and his neighbors did not prevail, and construction started in 1946. …And notwithstanding Mr. Nitardy and his neighbors, there is a sort of transgressive pleasure in ambling along the Promenade and taking in the backyards — it’s an unexpectedly intimate glimpse, like being in an elevator and standing inches from the nape of someone’s neck, far closer than normal personal space allows. …The backs of the houses — typical Brooklyn Heights brownstones and apartment buildings — vary widely and wonderfully: mid-19th-century Gothic-style porches; up-close views of an Art Deco apartment house; and the rear of the Nitardy house with its broad two-story glazed porch, a backyard Lever House facade.

Brought to Us by the B. Q. E. [NY Times]
Photo by lula1977