1910 (Reiss, Williamsburg, 2005, 9). By World War I, Williamsburg’s population began to decline, as people left the neighborhood to move to betterquality housing in other parts of the city—by the end of World War II, Williamsburg had more substandard apartment buildings than any other part of Brooklyn (Reiss, Williamsburg, 2005, 10). Greenpoint was North Brooklyn’s sparsely populated farming hinterland from the late 1600s until the mid-1800s, when bridges provided access from the area to booming Williamsburg and to Newtown, across the Newtown Creek, in Queens (Reiss, Greenpoint, 2005, 8-11). Like Williamsburg, Greenpoint became very industrial due to its waterfront access. At first, its main industry was shipbuilding—the U.S.S. Monitor’s origin is a Greenpoint shipyard—but ironworks, glassworks, and petroleum refineries appeared in the late 19th century. By the turn of the 20th century, Greenpoint’s population, which had flocked to the neighborhood for the plethora of jobs offered, was 80 percent of foreign parentage and 40 percent of foreign birth—mainly Polish and Italian (Reiss, Greenpoint, 2005, 20). However, in 1933, ferryboat service between Greenpoint and Manhattan ceased, which both signaled decline of—and brought additional decline to—Greenpoint’s industries. During the Great Depression, Greenpoint had the highest rate of unemployment in New York City. In a proposal to replace tenements in Greenpoint with public housing, the Citizens Housing Council referred to Greenpoint as “a grim district of cold-water flats” (Reiss, Greenpoint, 2005, 22). Jobs again became more plentiful during World War II and the neighborhood experienced an upswing (Reiss, Greenpoint, 2005, 24). Despite suffering periodic economic decline and poverty, both Williamsburg and Greenpoint have had the benefit of enjoying close proximity to the central business district of Manhattan, as well as changing combinations of rail, bridge and ferryboat access to Manhattan. In contrast to North Brooklyn, 1950s East Tremont—the South Bronx neighborhood through which the CBE plunged its way—was densely populated with people who lived in the five and six story buildings that lined its narrow streets. These people were largely Jewish and recent escapees of the squalid tenements on the Lower East Side (Caro, 1975, 851). East Tremont had always been a residential neighborhood—
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The BQE caused a dispersal of population and a destruction of businesses that started a prolonged drain of capital from the neighborhood.
1950s census tract map of neighborhoods impacted by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
there was no heavy industry like there was at the North Brooklyn waterfront—and most of its residents worked in Manhattan’s garment district (Caro, 1975, 851).
Advent of the BQE In America during the 1940s, highways were considered the way of the future. The popular consensus was that Americans would come home from World War II, have extra savings to spend, and want to buy things like cars and houses in the new, decongested, clean-air suburbs that were springing up around cities. However, because these people would still want access to cities, and because they wanted this access by car, and because nobody wanted congested neighborhood streets, the idea of the freeway came about (Kennedy, 1944). However, The New York Times contrasted the new freeways under construction with the
pre-war parkways by contrasting their purpose: whereas the parkways were built to allow for suburban commuting and to permit city dwellers to escape to countryside leisure on the weekends, the freeways were planned to permit commercial as well as passenger traffic to move rapidly in, out and around the city (Freeman, 1947). In 1945, Robert Moses wrote in The New York Times, that the “great need. . . which we are at last ready to meet with the help of the State and Federal highways authorities. . . is for mixed traffic expressways right through town” (Moses, 1945). In Brooklyn and Queens, the idea was to move people and their cars in the most streamlined way possible to the East River crossings, and to keep narrow, local streets free of congestion. The BQE would connect with all major roads in Queens and Brooklyn, and all East River crossings (New York City Arterial Program, 1958, 6). Moses described the proposed route of the BQE: it “will extend from the Kosciusko Bridge southerly to a connection with the Williamsburg Bridge, through Brooklyn Heights area to the BrooklynBattery Tunnel Plaza” (Moses, 1945). The BQE was completed in stages: the first stage connected eastern Queens to Meeker Avenue in Brooklyn via the Kosciusko Bridge. This stage was completed in 1939 (Marwell, 2007, 38). In 1948, Moses began to demolish buildings in the path of the highway in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, destroying a vibrant business district located on Williamsburg’s Broadway and “bisecting the cohesive community of Orthodox Jews, Italians, Poles, Slavs, and Russians” (Marwell, 2007, 38). This section elevated over Williamsburg and Greenpoint, connecting the Kosciusko Bridge to the Williamsburg Bridge, was completed and opened for traffic in 1952. In the mid-50s, the BQE section between the Williamsburg Bridge and the Manhattan bridge was built, and finished in 1960. In the name of slum clearance, as provided by Title I of the Housing Act of 1949, 45 acres of land—fifteen city blocks—were condemned in South Williamsburg to make way for the BQE and a housing project alongside it (Marwell, 2007, 40). It is important to note that one western Brooklyn community—Brooklyn Heights—did successfully convince the city to reroute the BQE so it did not go directly through their neighborhood. Today’s New Yorkers can thank those Brooklyn Heights objectors for the Brooklyn