Construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway

Construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway required the forcible displacement of tens of thousands of people across the two boroughs. Designed by Robert Moses (RM), the highway cut a nearly 15-mile gash through some of the most densely populated neighborhoods on the planet, ripping the core out of several communities while isolating others and inundating them with traffic. This animation begins in Greenpoint, where in the 1950s the BQE cut through the working class, immigrant neighborhood, gobbling up the commercial corridor along Meeker Ave. In Williamsburg and South Williamsburg, thousands of immigrants, including Jews from Eastern Europe, Poles, Italians, etc., and recently arrived Puerto Ricans were displaced as the highway cut diagonally through the existing street grid, taking out dozens of blocks and hundreds of buildings. Continuing to the neighborhoods of Downtown Brooklyn, RM flattened much of the historic core of what had been known as New York’s “twin city” before the days of mun