Video shows how the BQE changed an enormous swath of Brooklyn

By Gabe Friedman

Fresh off the news that a Brooklyn-to-Queens light rail system is now officially maybe in the works possibly, a video about another historic connection between the boroughs is making the rounds on Twitter.

An account called Segregation by Design — which uses “data and remastered/colorized historic photography to document the destruction of communities of color by redlining, urban renewal, and freeways” — posted an animation showing how the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway “cut a nearly 15-mile gash” throughout a huge chunk of Kings and Queens Counties.

Construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway required the forcible displacement of tens of thousands of people across the two boroughs. Designed by Robert Moses, the highway cut a nearly 15-mile gash through some of the most densely populated neighborhoods on the planet. pic.twitter.com/7zDV3tDKdP

— Segregation_by_Design (@SegByDesign) January 17, 2023

The video contrasts a map from 1924 with one of that 1984, tracing how the highway, officially a part of the larger I-278, snakes from Greenpoint in the north to Fort Hamilton and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

The stretch of highway, constructed from the 1930s and 1960s, was the brainchild of controversial city planner Robert Moses, the subject of Robert Caro’s famous 1,000-plus page 1974 biography “The Power Broker.” The highway radically altered the fabric of countless residential Brooklyn neighborhoods, forced thousands of people from their homes by bulldozing through low-income areas and leading to the construction of multiple public housing projects.

Several sections of the BQE are now in disrepair; last month, Mayor Eric Adams announced a proposal for fixing the crumbling cantilevered stretch of it that runs through Brooklyn Heights.

Watch the stunning video in full here.