Two views from the strange 69th Street overpass over the I-278 Brooklyn Queens Expressway in Woodside, Queens, as it appeared way back in June of 1998. The top view looks south towards the neighborhood's eponymous Woodside Avenue, while the bottom view looks north to the outlandishly over-glorified 2 1/4 block long 70th Street. A little veggie patch was planted in the odd triangle formed by the less than parallel alignment of 69th Street to it's bridge. The north side of the overpass also had a little garden. The multi-family dwelling on Woodside Ave, to the west of the expressway, was typical of such structures built throughout Queens, New York in the 1960s.

The northbound lanes of the BQE were preparing for the then existent Roosevelt Avenue exit 37 that has deep sixed into the grave during the reconstruction that began scarcely a year after these shots were taken. The little blue sign attached to the overhead directional, means a hospital is near the exit, that being the notorious Elmhurst General Medical Center. Notice how hospitals were already rarely called hospitals anymore, but instead the more euphemistic "Medical Centers", as if eliminating the word hospital will hide the fact that there are sick and dying people lying there. Or is it that the administrators all want to pretend they're Chad Everett? Elmhurst General had the reputation of sending unfortunate visitors away filled with germs. One got the feeling, after visiting there, that one may have ended up having to return there soon after, not as a visitor. Perhaps the rap was undeserved, but nobody I know who ever had to spend time there, patient or visitor, had a good word to say about the place. Of course, this was as of 20 years ago and hopefully this public run "medical center" has improved since then. The north and south end gardens were totally open to the public in 1998, but at least as of 2012, the oldest view available on Google Earth, they were fenced off to the public and the fencing got taller and far more substantial between 2012 and 2017. This oddball overpass is also a member of the BQE's Wedgie Club, a distinctly Brooklyn Queens Expressway quirk where several pairs of close knit overpasses form a tight wedge of space between them.