We're looking at the I-278 southbound BQE as it starts its run underneath the Brooklyn Heights Promenade overlooking the Brooklyn piers and Manhattan. This famed cantilevered section of highway was carved through the area from the late 1940s through to its completion in 1954. Despite the mostly north-south orientation of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway in New York City, it is actually part of an east-west interstate designation, since I-278 is technically a feeder extension of the primary I-78 east-west Interstate route that starts in New Jersey and runs out to Harrisburg, PA. I-78 did have a short lived and disjointed existence within NYC, on both the never completed Clearview and Nassau Expressways and for a time the Manhattan Bridge. Its ultimate planned heart and soul within the city, the never built Bushwick Expressway that probably would have run in part along Atlantic Avenue and Conduit Avenue, was a victim of master builder Robert Moses's loss of power in the turbulent 1960s. I-278 pretty much runs from the Bronx, through Staten Island, into New Jersey, via the BQE and Staten Island Expressways. The electronic sign below indicates construction ahead. Never ending construction delays were the bane of regular Brooklyn Queens Expressway masochists. Despite the seemingly endless work, the road always appeared to be in disrepair. Mind you these views are from May 1998. This section still awaits the Big One, the Mother of all reconstruction projects, the rebuilding of the triple decked cantilever. I will be very happy to be hundreds of miles away from here when that begins and takes a half century to complete, LOL!

In the northeast bound view, the upper deck of the BQE has just emerged from under the Brooklyn Heights Promenade overhang. The background is dominated by parts of the massive Watchtower complex that back then was still owned by the Jehovah Witnesses. As I rewrite this in 2018, those buildings were sold off in 2017 to developers for a nice hunk of change. Whether the haul will be put to work by the Witnesses on social works, or leadership perks, who knows. The billboard on the left hawked the 1998 cinematic attraction, Godzilla.