Brooklyn Heights Promenade

With views of Lower Manhattan's skyline and the New York Harbor, it came about as the byproduct of competing proposals for the highway's route that were resolved in the midst of World War II.

[4] In 1939, a topographical engineer with New York's then new City Planning Department mapped a route for such a highway that hewed quite closely to the East River waterfront of the two boroughs.

The Eagle reported that the route proposed by Moses would bisect the neighborhood, even requiring at least the partial demolition of a recently built marble courthouse.

Richardson, the association's president and a Wall Street corporate lawyer, and Ferdinand W. ("Fred") Nitardy, vice president for plant construction of Squibb Pharmaceuticals, which then had a major complex at the north end of Brooklyn Heights, lobbied hard for a route that would move the highway westward, to run along the water-fronting escarpment at the neighborhood's edge.

A plea by Nitardy at the hearing for the highway to be built on two separate decks with a "cover" on which he could restore his rear garden was heard with seeming sympathy by Moses.

Moses agreed to the idea of the cover, but then, a month after the hearing, Brooklyn Borough President John Cashmore, whose office was in charge of the project, informed Nitardy by letter that the adopted plan "would preclude the use by you of the deck" above the highway, which would instead become a public esplanade.

[2] Moses betrayed no hint that a similar plan, with two highway decks covered, not by private gardens but by a public walkway, had already been drawn up at Andrews & Clark.

Demolition of the warehouses that lined the eastern, or inland, side of Furman Street began in the fall of 1946, and construction of a triple cantilever section followed for the next few years.

However, the project's chief engineer, Ernest J. Clark, disputed his claim, contending that the design was a team effort and had "evolved" through considering various means of supporting the highway and testing their stresses and appearance.

Moses afterward responded to a letter questioning his position by writing, "The city cannot do a piece of spot zoning simply protecting this particular view."

[13][15] Because of sizable opposition to the cheaper option, mayor Bill de Blasio later stated that his administration was open to considering other ideas, including routing the expressway over the Brooklyn Bridge Park, slightly to the west.