It's August 2001, just a shade prior to 9-11 and we're traveling east on the Interstate 495 designated Long Island Expressway, one of New York City's preeminent arterial highways. We've just emerged from under the double decked section and are about to merge with the construction choked traffic coming down from the upper deck. This part of the Long Island Expressway is more technically called the Queens-Midtown Expressway, named for the Queen-Midtown Tunnel connecting to Manhattan that this arterial highway was originally designed to serve as an access road. That technical name changes over to Horace Harding Expressway after crossing Queens Boulevard in Rego Park a few miles east of here. Nobody I know ever refers to either section as anything other than Long Island Expressway. Not even the directional signs do. It's the same situation where nobody calls the Brooklyn part of the Belt Parkway Shore Parkway. It's always just The Belt. This de facto rule gets a little muddied however where the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and its Gowanus Expressway associate are concerned.

The slim looking overpass coming up is what was then a recently updated 61st Street walkbridge, connecting 61st Street on the south side of the highway to 63rd Street and Frank Principe Park on the north.

The Hamilton Place overpass now comes into view and yes, we are still about to merge. We do a lot of "still about to" merging around here. By this point the merge with those coming off the upper deck is a long anticipated event. Good things come to those who wait, right?

Almost there, almost there, for both the merge and Hamilton Place. This overpass had been replaced some years prior to this. As I've stated a number of times, construction never ends on the Long Island Expressway. It's like some sort of plaything for the State DOT.

Finally we've reached Hamilton Place, although we're still a couple of traffic cones away from marrying the upper deckers. Hamilton Place is yet another curiosity akin to 65th Place, in that it is a Place designated street of some importance, that being it gets to cross over the Long Island Expressway, which few roads of any designation get to do. Place designated streets are usually minor single block long lanes tucked away between two widely spaced intersections. Few get to even go a second block, let alone cross an arterial highway. Hamilton and 65th Place may be the only such Places in New York City to do so. Hamilton and 65th Place share more than this in their stormy relationship and rivalry. You see a scant hop, skip and jump to the north of the LIE, 65th Place actually gets upended by the relatively short lived Hamilton. The two should really be a single road, 65th Place, which like 58th Street runs all the way up into Woodside and crosses the BQE and Queens Boulevard in the process. The powers that be apparently felt 65th Place was way out of place crossing so many places and decided to finally put it in its place here by giving its rightful place over the LIE to 5-1/2 block long Hamilton Place.