Downtown Leaders Want FDR Overpass to Undergo an Overthrow
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine is proposing to demolish the FDR Drive viaduct between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Battery, replacing it with a grade-level boulevard that would feature new park space and lanes for cyclists and pedestrians.
At a Wednesday announcement held beneath the structure, Mr. Levine began by invoking the name of the controversial master builder whose projects transformed much of New York in the mid-20th century, often in ways that are now deemed to have favored automobiles over people. “Robert Moses extended the FDR south of the Brooklyn Bridge in the 1950s,” the Borough President said. “And he created a massive, noisy, ugly, dark barrier between the people of Lower Manhattan and the waterfront. And we are here today to say, 80 years later, ‘it is time to tear that viaduct down.’”
“We want to replace it with a beautiful new boulevard at street level,” he continued, “with multi-use lanes, with lush open space, with direct access to the waterfront, with unobstructed views of this gorgeous harbor.”
“And to those of you who say ‘it can’t be done,’” Mr. Levine added, “we already did it. There used to be an elevated highway on the West Side. We tore that down in the 1980s. And today, Hudson River Park is one of the most amazing public spaces in New York City.”
He said that while versions of this proposal have been in circulation for decades, the timing may now be propitious to resurrect the idea. He noted that the Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan, which is currently in the preliminary design phase, envisions creating massive new infrastructure along the East River waterfront, to safeguard the community against storm surge, sea-level rise, and other effects of climate change. “To do these two projects together makes so much sense,” Mr. Levine said. “There’s so much potential synergy.”
A further impetus to push for demolition of the FDR viaduct comes from the Reconnecting Communities program sponsored by the federal Department of Transportation, which seeks to undo the effects of now-outmoded urban planning strategies “by removing, retrofitting, or mitigating highways or other transportation facilities that create barriers to community connectivity, including to mobility, access, or economic development.”
Mr. Levine noted a September 28 deadline to applying for the next round of Reconnecting Communities grants. “We need to act now,” he said. “We want to seize this opportunity to do something big and bold.”
State Senator Brian Kavanagh said, “this structure behind us really is a relic of a very different time, a time when it seemed okay to separate communities from our waterfronts and our waterways. That’s partly because at that time, we viewed our waterways as industrial pathways. The East River and the Hudson River and most of our waterways in this harbor were toxic. There were industrial uses all along this river that made it such that people wanted to look away and not look toward the river.”
Captain Jonathan Boulware, president of the South Street Seaport Museum (which began advocating for the viaduct’s removal in the early 80s), said, “we’re looking at a piece of infrastructure that was built at a time when this was a very different neighborhood. It was a commercial and industrial neighborhood. But we live here now. And the ability to connect with our waterways is a new idea.”
“But the biggest issue is not just how the community connects with its waters,” he continued, “but that the FDR, as comprised right now, stands in the way of effective resiliency planning for New York.”