gowanus-expressway-greenway-01-2008.jpg
Here’s one for the awesome-ideas-that’ll-probably-never-happen file: The American Institute of Architects has drafted a design for replacing the Gowanus Expressway with a greenway on 3rd Avenue and putting a cable-suspension roadway on 1st Avenue, according to an article in yesterday’s Daily News. “The Gowanus Expressway is an aesthetic blight to the communities it straddles,” said architect Glen Cutrona, who spearheaded the design project. “When it was constructed, it fractured the community. And while we’re aware that Third Ave. needs to be a vehicular corridor, it also lends itself to greening.” A plan to replace the expressway with a tunnel has been studied for more than 20 years but has so far come to nothing.
Make Gowanus Go Away [NY Daily News]
Expressway photo by gkjarvis; rendering from the Daily News.


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. Hey 1:38 –

    The grandchildren of those in Brooklyn and Queens would have been the ones choking on truck fumes because the proposed tunnel would have taken all of the trucks off of the roads of NJ and relocated them here. Who in their right mind, who isn’t getting campaign contributions from railroaders would want that? The Greenpoint-Williamsburg communities were as opposed to the plan as the Queens communities were. What you’re saying is that Bloomberg should not have listened to his outer borough constituents and only to Manhattanites who would have been the only ones to benefit from this tunnel. Even Crains and the NY Building Congress thought the Cross Harbor tunnel was a bad idea.