Opened October 7, 1950 as a compromise after residents fought Robert Moses's original plan to route the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway through the neighborhood, the promenade was built directly on top of the highway's triple cantilever.
The promenade sits above an aging BQE structure slated for reconstruction — sections are expected to stay open in phases during the work rather than closing outright, but expect intermittent construction disruption as the project firms up.
The Promenade is a bargain struck under pressure. In 1941 Robert Moses proposed running the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway straight through Brooklyn Heights; the Brooklyn Eagle put "Plan for Express Highway Is Shocking" on its front page in September 1942, and the Brooklyn Heights Association, led by Roy M. D. Richardson and Ferdinand W. Nitardy, pushed the route west to the edge of the bluff instead. What the neighborhood got in exchange was the roof of the road.
Structurally it is a triple cantilever: two stacked roadway decks of what is now Interstate 278, hung off the escarpment, with the walkway as the third and topmost level. The engineering firm was Andrews & Clark, with Ernest J. Clark as chief engineer and S. Starr Walbridge and Phillips H. Lovering among those who worked out the stacking. The southern half opened October 7, 1950, the northern half on December 7, 1951, and the expressway itself was finished in 1954. The walk is only 1,826 feet end to end.
Look down before you look out. Furman Street below was solid warehousing until demolition began in the autumn of 1946, and the piers beyond it belonged to the New York Dock Company. That whole apron is now Brooklyn Bridge Park, which makes the Promenade a viewing gallery over its own former working shore. The blocks behind you became New York City's first designated historic district on November 23, 1965.
The outlook runs southwest across the harbor — Governors Island, the Statue of Liberty, Lower Manhattan — with the Brooklyn Bridge closing the north end, so walking northward gives the better sequence. The structure is also failing: engineers have projected weight restrictions on the cantilever and, absent reconstruction, eventual closure. Traffic underfoot is audible the entire way.
Brooklyn, NY 11201 · Official site ↗
The Brooklyn Heights Promenade, also called the Esplanade, is a 1,826-foot-long (557 m) platform and pedestrian walkway cantilevered over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, New York City, United States. With views of Lower Manhattan's skyline and the New York Harbor, it came about as the byproduct of competing proposals for the highway's route that were resolved in the midst of World War II. Actual construction came after the war. As a structure built over a roadway, the Promenade is owned by the NYCDOT and is not considered a park; however, NYC Parks maintains the entire Promenade.
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