 West Side Elevated Highway | |
|---|---|
| New York State Route 9A | |
 Approximate trace of the elevated highway at its greatest extent | |
| Route information | |
| Maintained by NYCDOT | |
| Status | Replaced with surface boulevard |
| Existed | 1929–1973 |
| Major junctions | |
| South end |   I-478 / FDR Drive / Battery Place in Battery Park City |
| North end |  Henry Hudson Parkway in Hell's Kitchen |
| Location | |
| Country | United States |
| State | New York |
| Highway system | |
The West Side Elevated Highway (West Side Highway or Miller Highway, named for Julius Miller, Manhattan borough president from 1922 to 1930) was an elevated section of New York State Route 9A (NY 9A) running along the Hudson River in the New York City borough of Manhattan to the tip of the island. It was an elevated highway, one of the first urban freeways in the world, and served as a prototype for urban freeways elsewhere, including Boston's Central Artery.
Built between 1929 and 1951, the highway had narrow confines—which could not accommodate trucks—and sharp S exit ramps that made it obsolete almost immediately. Maintenance was minimal, and the use of corrosive salts to de-ice the highway in winter accelerated its decay. When chunks of its facade began to fall off due to lack of maintenance, and a truck and car fell through it at 14th Street in 1973, the highway was shut down, and a debate began over whether to renovate it or dismantle it.[1] Attitudes to urban planning had changed in the intervening decades, and the decision was made not to repair the decaying structure.
The need to replace the deteriorating highway was recognized in the 1950s. Plans were drafted, but not executed. By 1971, a plan evolved for the elevated highway to be replaced by an underground interstate-quality highway, which came to be called Westway. It received approval from many levels of government, from the city to the federal, but was scuttled in 1985 owing to environmental issues. In the time between the closure of the elevated highway and the completion of its dismantling, while debate about Westway was proceeding, remaining sections of the old highway structure began to be unofficially utilized as an elevated urban park, for jogging and bicycling.
By 1989, the old elevated highway structure was totally dismantled except for a small portion from 59th Street to 72nd Street, which, in effect, became the southern extension of the Henry Hudson Parkway. Eventually, a grade-level six lane "urban boulevard" was built, which is generally referred to as the West Side Highway, although the elements of it use the names of the surface streets which existed before the elevated highway was built: West Street, Eleventh Avenue and Twelfth Avenue. It connects to the remaining elevated structure via a ramp at 57th Street.