West Side Highway
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by Marc P. Anderson
The first time I ever encountered the elevated highway along Manhattan’s Lower West Side was in August of 1973. I was not even old enough to drink but I made an astonishing, barely rational decision to drive the car my mother had purchased for me, a used but like-new two-door 1972 Buick Skylark coupe, from Chicago to New York City, a place I had studied well but had never before visited. One of my goals was to actually leave home and relocate to New York if I could, and restart my life.
Alone, I drove a route that took about three days with stops in Toledo, Ohio; Pittsburgh; Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; and finally New York. I entered the city the way I wanted, over the George Washington Bridge, then south down the island on the Henry Hudson Parkway which eventually transformed into the West Side Highway, a structure that was elevated all the way to the tip of Lower Manhattan.
It was a thrilling and sobering ride.
The highway was unappealing and in terrible shape on that sunny summer day when I traveled with open windows that allowed hot city air to lazily yet intensely enter the car. There were potholes everywhere, narrow lanes and no shoulders. Entrance and exit ramps were designed in a way that seemed to deliberately increase the likelihood of accidents. I had to dodge other drivers in the fast, chaotic, car-damaging traffic. It was not too far removed from a stock car race where everyone dared everyone else.
Yet I was fascinated. To my right were old piers and docks, several still being used, with a variety of small and large ships that spoke of the history and the harbor that fueled the growth and importance of this island city. To my left were factories, warehouses and neighborhoods that contained reminders of industrial might that I knew was spread all around the metropolitan area.
The ride was endlessly bumpy and I was afraid that the uneven, decrepit pavement would cause a flat tire or worse, a broken axle. But my car held on through the abuse. Together we had come so far and we were here! Nevertheless, I made a mental note: Don’t drive this highway again. Not long afterward, I violated that self-instruction and drove north along the West Side Highway, which I knew was still the fastest way up the Hudson River side of Manhattan.
Was this, I wondered, either in reality or symbolically the highway that leapt over the night time scene of the gang fight in West Side Story? Was this structure confirmation that New York, widely criticized in the press in the 1970s, was no longer the exciting, awesome city to which I was so inexplicably drawn? It mattered and it didn’t matter; I was presold anyway. I accepted the city’s considerable flaws. It still had so much. It was still the legendary New York City.
Suffice it to say that I did not move permanently to the city at that time. Within less than a week I was broke and I returned to Chicago. However, like a magnet, New York beckoned insistently and I came back twice in 1977, followed by several visits in 1978 including to find a job. I officially relocated in August 1978, exactly five years after my first visit to the city.
But the old West Side Highway had long since been closed. My original drive on the highway in 1973 was during the last months of its use. Due to a collapse which dropped a heavy truck and a car to the ground level beneath the roadway, it was closed in December of 1973. A massive city, state and federal argument began immediately over what was to be done about the highway, with citizens and civic groups joining in a fight that produced major lawsuits lasting years.
Nevertheless, before demolition was about to occur, there was a period when pedestrians could get away with walking along the highway. People strolled with their dogs, jogged or took pictures. I, too, found appealing possibilities for capturing different views of the city from underneath and on top of the old road. But I also knew that one day it wouldn’t exist. For that reason, it felt important to take a few pictures while I still could.
I was right. By the mid-1980s, the old West Side Highway, the road that I drove on the very first day I ever traveled down Manhattan Island, was gone.
Copyright © Marc P. Anderson
Marc P. Anderson has had a dual career in publishing and as a freelance photojournalist.
This article appears with additional photographs in a collection of approximately 35 essays entitled “@MarcPerspective: 40+ Years of Photojournalism” involving photojournalism images taken in the 1970s and 1980s.
