Brooklyn Heights Promenade North: The Cantilevered Skyway

Why is it significant?

Emerge onto the wide flagstone terrace of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and prepare to have your breath stolen by the sweeping panoramic canvas of New York Harbor unfolding before you.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Emerge onto the wide flagstone terrace of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and prepare to have your breath stolen by the sweeping panoramic canvas of New York Harbor unfolding before you. Strolling along the wooden benches and green iron railings, you are suspended directly above the churning lanes of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, yet the roar of traffic is magically swallowed by the innovative tiered roadway design. Across the East River, the towers of Wall Street rise like giant crystal monoliths, glowing brilliant gold and silver in the clear afternoon light.

We owe this sublime civic promenade to a historic triumph of neighborhood activism over raw bureaucratic power. In the nineteen forties, legendary master builder Robert Moses planned to plow the six-lane Brooklyn-Queens Expressway straight through the historic residential core of Brooklyn Heights, which would have bulldozed hundreds of historic nineteenth-century brownstones. Feisty community leaders banded together and forced Moses to compromise by stacking the highway into a triple-decker cantilevered concrete structure and capping it with this peaceful pedestrian terrace, opened in nineteen fifty. Community preservationists like Talbot Hamlin rallied civic groups and legal scholars to argue that the historic character of America's first historic district outweighed the ruthless expedience of urban highway engineers, establishing a vital precedent for municipal landmark preservation across the country.

Notice the absolute stillness on the walkway despite thousands of cars and trucks speeding directly beneath your feet: the multi-level concrete cantilever acts as a massive acoustic baffle that deflects vehicle noise out toward the river instead of up to the park.

Lean over the railing and spot the orange Staten Island Ferries tracing white wakes through the blue harbor water as they journey between Manhattan and St. George.

Turn inland down the peaceful cobblestone intersection of Cranberry Street into the historic Fruit Street corridor.