The High Bridge lives up to its name by offering great views of the city from high above the Harlem River:
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But it is the near views of the river banks that are the most dramatic – infrastructure from the golden age of Motordom, when roads were designed more as parkways to be integrated with the landscape:
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At least on the Manhattan side. To the east, on the Bronx side by contrast, there’s evidence of the Robert Moses meat-clever approach to highway construction in the concrete-and-steel spaghetti that serves the notorious Cross-Bronx Expressway (the building of which is described in the most extraordinary chapter of Robert Caro’s biography of Moses, “The Power Broker” – discussed here.)
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In the end, it hardly mattered how much roadway got built. It remains one of the most congested parts of America’s interstate system.
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The difference now is that there’s a network of greenways, bike routes, trails and sidewalks that allows New Yorkers to move through and across their great city.
