The West Side Highway (officially the Joe DiMaggio Highway) is a mostly surface section of New York State Route 9A (NY 9A) that runs from West 72nd Street along the Hudson River to the southern tip of Manhattan. It replaced the West Side Elevated Highway, built between 1929 and 1951, which was shut down in 1973 due to neglect and lack of maintenance, and was dismantled by 1989. The term "West Side Highway" is often mistakenly used, particularly by the news media traffic reporters, to include the roadway north of 72nd Street which is properly known as the Henry Hudson Parkway.
The current highway, which was completed in 2001, but required some reconstruction due to damage sustained in the 9/11 attacks, uses the surface streets that existed before the elevated highway was built: West Street, Eleventh Avenue and Twelfth Avenue. A short section of Twelfth Avenue still runs between 129th and 138th Streets, under the Riverside Drive Viaduct.
Read more about West Side Highway: Route Description, History, Major Intersections
Famous quotes containing the words west, side and/or highway:
“Every other evening around six o’clock he left home and dying dawn saw him hustling home around the lake where the challenging sun flung a flaming sword from east to west across the trembling water.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“I went to the circus, and loafed around the back side till the watchman went by, and then dived in under the tent. I had my twenty-dollar gold piece and some other money, but I reckoned I better save it.... I ain’t opposed to spending money on circuses, when there ain’t no other way, but there ain’t no use in wasting it on them.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“My manner is the footnote to your immoral
Beauty, that leads me with a magic hair
Up the spun highway of a vanishing hill
To Words....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)