The highway begins from Battery Park close to the mouth of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel where it also accepts traffic from the southern terminus of FDR Drive.

The route continues with this name passing by numerous piers along the Hudson River until Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District where it becomes Eleventh Avenue.

The road continues past the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and Piers 84 to 92, a major cruise ship terminal building.

Among the proposals: Manhattan borough president Julius Miller said that something had to be done right away and ultimately pushed through the plan for the West Side Elevated Highway, which was to eventually bear his name.

At the time, West Street exhibited a "daily avalanche of freight and passengers in traffic", and was "walled by an unbroken line of bulkhead sheds and dock structures"[5] blocking the view not only of the river, but even of the ships being serviced, and the commerce carried out on those piers and slips was vital to the economic health of the city.

Before the West Side Highway was built, the road along the Hudson River was busy, with significant cross traffic going to docks and ferries.

The first official proposal for an elevated highway along Manhattan's west side was made by Police Commissioner Richard Edward Enright on January 12, 1924, in a letter to the New York City Board of Estimate.

The planned highway would no longer go to the Battery, instead ending at Canal Street, meeting the Holland Tunnel (which would open to traffic on November 13, 1927).

It was also believed that giving NYCRR elevated tracks on the west side would allow the railroad to monopolize freight and raise prices.

The Port Authority believed it was primarily a freight problem, but NYCRR and New York City considered it to be a grade-crossing elimination project.

Miller also received a letter from NYCRR Vice President Ira Place, stating that the railroad would reduce freight rates if the new elevated structure were built.

[10] On January 20, 1926, borough president Miller sent a plan for an $11 million elevated highway to be built completely on city property to the Board of Estimate.

Miller spoke at a meeting of the Market and Business Men's Association of the Greenwich and Chelsea Districts on October 30, 1928, detailing plans for the highway.

The alignment in the Chelsea district was slightly modified to avoid proposed piers, and the path through the markets was realigned to pass over a corner of the property.

A reversible roadway, carrying cars in the direction of rush hour traffic, would occupy the eighth and ninth (top) levels.

[26] Having begun at Canal Street in 1929, implementation of the elevated roadway had progressed as far as Midtown by the time that Robert Moses became NYC Parks Commissioner and took a direct interest in local projects by 1934.

[32] The final plan, championed by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Mayor John Lindsay, called for burying the six-lane highway in 220 acres (89 ha) of new landfill south of 40th Street, placing the accompanying development on land instead of on platforms.

[33][34] Hugh Carey, who was to become governor, and Ed Koch, who was to become mayor, both campaigned against the plan, saying that it would be a waste of government funds and would be a windfall for private developers.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan's Department of Transportation and the United States Army Corps of Engineers were on board for the construction with a 1981 price tag of $2.1 billion.

One version of Westway would have continued the buried highway up to the George Washington Bridge, eliminating the elevated section between 59th and 72nd streets, as well as the Henry Hudson Parkway.

That option was rejected because of the cost and because it would violate the Blumenthal Amendment, which prohibited any highway construction that would alter Riverside Park.

[37] The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) rejected former parks commissioner Robert Moses's proposal to relocate the elevated section to grade also because of the Blumenthal Amendment as well as the presumed negative effect on development opportunities.

Later, Trump acquired the property and proposed Television City, a design based on a massive 13-block-long podium to hide the elevated highway.

Six civic organizations opposed to Trump City proposed a plan that would relocate and bury the highway in conjunction with a much smaller development and a southward extension of Riverside Park.

As part of the Riverside South agreement, the Urban Development Corporation proceeded with planning and environmental studies for a relocated highway.

[44] But relocating and burying the elevated highway section became politically complicated when, at the same time, NYSDOT went ahead with its $70 million project to straighten, widen, and reinforce the viaduct.

[48] In January 1987, the commission unanimously agreed to build the highway as a six-lane urban boulevard with a parkway-style median and decorative lightposts.

On March 30, 1999, at the urging of Mayor Giuliani, the highway was renamed for legendary New York Yankees player Joe DiMaggio, who had died three weeks earlier.

The famous flag raising photograph by Thomas E. Franklin of The Record took place by the highway on the northwest corner of the site.

[58] In 2004, the police forces of both the PANYNJ and the NYPD announced concerns that the proposed One World Trade Center would be too close to the West Side Highway and thus vulnerable to car bombs.