Brooklyn Heights Promenade

The weather was beautiful this past Sunday in New York, and my husband and I decided to take a little drive to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. There was lots of traffic, as usual, as we drove along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway on our way towards the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, from where we live in Brooklyn. At 71 square miles, Brooklyn is New York City's second largest borough. It's also the most populated. In 2006, the U.S. Census Bureau calculated Brooklyn's population at 2,508,820!

You can see some of the Manhattan skyline on the left as we are actually driving under the promenade.

We exit from the expressway and enter Brooklyn Heights where we find a parking spot in front of this charming old home which must date back to the 1800's.

We walk about two blocks north towards the East River. Can you see the Manhattan skyline in the distance?

This is the view of the western end of the promenade as it literally hangs over the expressway.

In the mid-1940's city planner Robert Moses wanted to construct a new expressway right through the heart of Brooklyn Heights, and he was stopped by the outcry of the Brooklyn Heights Association. A solution emerged to build a two-tiered highway above the waterfront and it resulted in the construction of the promenade as a way to insulate the neighborhood from the noise of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. It opened to the public in October 1950 and has been a magnet for local residents and visitors alike for over half a century.

This is the view of the traffic flowing underneath that area of the promenade:


This is what you see as you walk along the one-third of a mile long promenade from stretching from Remsen to Orange Streets -- New York Harbor, lower Manhattan, and the expanse of the Brooklyn Bridge going over the East River.

It's quite a view! The promenade is a narrow walkway park lined with benches, trees, a playground and it's a favorite destination for tourists, joggers, strollers, families, dog walkers and lovers of all ages. The view is also spectacular at night, when Manhattan is ablaze with lights!

There are a lot of lives living and working in each of those buildings in Manhattan, and there is also a big hole in the sky where once the twin towers of the World Trade center once loomed high over all of them. You will probably have to enlarge the photo below to see it clearer, but it is a bronze plaque that was placed on the promenade walkway in 2001, and it depicts the Manhattan skyline as it was before the destruction of the Twin Towers, so you can see where their general location was, and how high they were in relation to the buildings in lower Manhattan.
From the promenade you can see the remains of some of the old Brooklyn piers that were crowded with ships unloading cargo many years ago when Brooklyn was an active port. Now they are mainly derelict, and years were spent debating many proposals as to how to put that land to good use. The final determination was to turn it into parkland, and there is construction going on right now, as you can see by the cranes in the foreground.
The tall ships docked at South Street Seaport in lower Manhattan can been seen in the photo below.

Another view of the Brooklyn Bridge below, and in the far distance, to the right, is the Empire State Building.
In the photo below you can see the Statue of Liberty and the Staten Island Ferry crossing New York harbor.
As we walked along the promenade we saw this little bird enjoying his seat on a park bench. He was also delighting in the nice weather and the little break from winter!

Just like a perfect gentleman he hopped up onto the railing and offered his seat to me with a little chirp! Why thank you! Don't mind if I do!
It was the perfect way to spend a few hours on a splendid afternoon!