West Side Highway Opens

Onlookers watch automobiles travel southbound as the West Side Elevated Highway opens after eight years of construction, February 9, 1937. With the George Washington Bridge standing in the background, the cars traveled along the Hudson River. The 4.5-mile roadway, at a cost of $16 million, extended from 72nd Street to Canal Street.

When the elevated highway opened, Mayor La Guardia demonstrated its value in an automobile race with Borough President Samuel Levy. The mayor traveled from City Hall to West 50th Street along the Hudson River in 12 minutes and 46 seconds. Levy, taking a route through the middle of the city, required nearly 35 minutes.

The roadway “is one of the important links in a series of perimeter highways planned to gird Manhattan and contribute to a solution of its urgent problem of vehicular traffic congestion,” The Times wrote. “It is an integral part of the thirteen-mile arterial highway reaching from Canal Street to the northerly end of Riverside Drive and its extensions. In due time it will be linked with the proposed East River Drive.”

The highway, however, was obsolete almost from the start. Its lanes were narrow, it could not accommodate trucks and its exit and entrance lanes were dangerous. It was shut down in 1973 and a non-elevated roadway called simply the West Side Highway replaced it.