"There must be progress toward better mass transit. There must also be progress toward a freer, environmentally sounder movement of Manhattan's vehicular traffic." This was written in 1975, but might as well have been published in the NY Times yesterday.
At the time, the West Side Highway, née Miller Highway (and officially Joe DiMaggio Highway!), was getting a lot of ink. It was sitting at the city's periphery, an abandoned field of potholes with narrow lanes and hazardous exit ramps. It had also just collapsed in '73 (and been closed "indefinitely") under the weight of dumptruck, which was carrying asphalt for ongoing repairs of the highway. The multi-billion plan to reconstruct it had plenty of opponents, and in the 1970s things were in a standstill.
It was in 1976 that photographer Jan Staller decided to document it all before plans started moving forward—from the Museum of the City of New York recently shared his photos (which you can see the rest of here):
(Jan Steller/Used with permission from the Museum of the City of New York)
"In 1976, Staller headed for the west side of lower Manhattan to explore the abandoned Miller Highway. On the vast expanses of that deteriorating roadway—better known as the West Side Highway—he found unblocked sunlight, an open horizon, and all varieties of weather. Taking advantage of these qualities for his photography he began a body of work entitled Frontier New York. The resulting images describe a transitory experience of atmosphere..."
Photographers were still having fun up there in the 1980s—here's a shot of someone lying in the roadbed in 1980:
Abandoned West Side Highway, circa 1980. (Photo by Steven Siegel)
Demolition began later that decade, which displaced the homeless who had by that point found shelter on the elevated roadway. In 1989, the NY Times reported on Robert Ing, who "stood beside the ramshackle plywood shed he first built five years ago on the disused elevated portion of the West Side Highway." Demolition was scheduled to start soon, and Ing was removing his bicycles, radio, and sleeping bag—he told the paper, "They told me everything was going to be blown up at 7 o'clock in the morning."
