Wallet Card at remnants of the old West Side Highway

The West Side Highway, built in 1936, was hailed as an engineering marvel - an elevated highway along the western edge of Manhattan, that promised to eliminate north-south traffic jams and cut travel times up to two-thirds. The elevated highway was never propertly maintained by the city, however, and even by the 1950s was in a rapid decline. On December 16, 1973, a section of the expressway collapsed, and the highway was immediately closed down, and finally was torn down in 1987. It has since been replaced by the Joe DiMaggio Highway, a surface-level street named after the former Yankee great.

There were many beautiful art deco elements incorporated into the old highway, including large wing friezes along the overhead facade. Some of these friezes still remain along the side of the highway behind a chain-link fence just below 34th street, nestled among various bits of rubble and another oddity that will be the subject of a future post...