START: Nassau Avenue subway station (G train)
FINISH: 52 Street subway station (7 train)
DISTANCE: 3.1 miles (5 kilometers)
Photographs by Michael Cairl except where noted.. Map courtesy footpathapp.com.
When I was growing up I heard the name of this bridge pronounced “koski-osko.” Proper pronunciation is something closer to “ko-SHOO-sko.” With that out of the way, this is the second Kosciuszko Bridge. The current bridge is a dual suspension span, the one carrying traffic to Queens opening in 2017 and the one carrying traffic to Brooklyn, plus a wide pedestrian and bike path, opening in 2019. The bridge carries the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (Interstate 278) over Newtown Creek, a body of water so polluted that it is a Superfund site.
The first bridge opened in 1939 as the Meeker Avenue Bridge and was renamed a year later. It was an awful, ugly old span. Its daily traffic volume was well in excess of what it was designed for. The bridge’s clearance above Newtown Creek was much greater than it needed to be. The steep grades at either end of the span and the lack of shoulders made a quick transit of the bridge a rare occurrence indeed.
The first Kosciuszko Bridge. Image courtesy historicbridges.org.
I started this walk in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. It has long been an industrial area and has long had a large Polish community. Some street scenes follow.
Polish pharmacy on Nassau Avenue.
Polish restaurant on Nassau Avenue.
This might not be a Polish establishment but it has a great old sign, probably from the 1940s, above the storefront. On Nassau Avenue.
This street sign, at the intersection of Nassau Avenue and Monitor Street, recalls the fact that the U.S. Navy’s first ironclad warship, the Monitor, was built in 1861 in a shipyard in Greenpoint.
Eventually I got to the Brooklyn end of the bridge, where there is a nice little plaza and a monument to the bridge’s namesake, Tadeusz Kosciuszko.
At the Brooklyn end of the bridge.
Beneath the bridge on the Brooklyn side are scrapyards and light industry. At the Queens end of the bridge are a yard for construction cranes on one side and a section of the huge Calvary Cemetery on the other. The bridge does offer quite a view of Manhattan.
Brooklyn on the left, Newtown Creek in the middle, Queens on the right, Manhattan in the distance.
One of the sections of Calvary Cemetery, from the Queens end of the bridge.
A very nice safety measure at the Queens end of the bike and pedestrian path. A similar measure was installed on the sidewalks at grade crossings of Utah Transit Authority’s TRAX light rail extensions, to make people more aware of a grade crossing where trains would be running.
Skate park at the Queens end of the bridge.
From the Queens end of the bridge there is a serpentine path leading past the Long Island Expressway (Interstate 495) to the Sunnyside neighborhood. The path is narrower than that on the bridge but it is in excellent condition. Sunnyside is a diversifying residential neighborhood built after what is now the number 7 subway (Flushing line) opened in 1917. Greenpoint Avenue cuts diagonally across the street grid and is a busy commercial street. It led me to a nice Filipino restaurant, Kabayan, for lunch. At another table a group of six was having a feast of all kinds of meat and seafood with clumps of rice, all spread out on banana leaves. It made me want to go back with a bunch of people, having reserved this feast ahead of time.
On my way to journey’s end, the shabby 52 Street subway station, I saw the God is Love Parking Lot.
This was an excellent walk on a nice, cool day. The Kosciuszko Bridge was easy to get to and a delight to walk. There was good walking at either end of the bridge and a tasty lunch at the end. I’ve added crossing the walkable bridges of New York City to my travels and will keep it up. The bridges across Newtown Creek and its tributary, Dutch Kills, will take up two more walks, and there are plenty more around the city. For more information about Newtown Creek and its bridges, past and present (except for the new Kosciuszko Bridge) go to Kevin Walsh’s excellent post at NEWTOWN CREEK - Forgotten New York (forgotten-ny.com).
Route of this walk.