The Brooklyn Heights Promenade

by Arcadia Publishing

Overview

Featured in films and on television and used as a backdrop to countless photos, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade offers the public a view that is usually reserved for the rich at the top of a tower.

From this one-third-mile stretch, locals and tourists take in the Manhattan skyline, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and New York Harbor. But its history is less harmonious. Plans by the powerful Robert Moses to run the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway through a resistant neighborhood led to contention and an unforeseen eventual compromise. In this volume, Brooklyn Heights Press editor Henrik Krogius presents this history, along with his articles that document the fate of the Promenade over the years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609495299
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	11/18/2011
Series:	Landmarks
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

A native of Finland, Henrik Krogius studied architecture at Harvard and journalism at Columbia. From Columbia, he received a Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship that formed the basis of travel and freelance reportage from Europe, Asia and Africa in 1954—56. For twenty-seven years, Krogius was employed by NBC as a writer and producer of news. While still with NBC, he began his research into the elusive origins of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Building on that research, he received three grants to study the possibilities for a better relationship between urban highways and pedestrians. The grants funded further international travels. Krogius wrote extensively on these matters for the Brooklyn Heights Press and Cobble Hill News, whose publisher, J. Dozier Hasty, invited him at the end of 1990 to be its editor. He has served in that capacity since then. He is the author of two previous books: New York, You're a Wonderful Town! (Arcade Publishing 2003), and Abroad: Quest and Self-Questioning in a World Gone By (self-published through Blurb, Inc., 2010), a work about his 1954—56 travels. He is married to Elaine Taylor Krogius, a retired arts librarian. They have two sons and two grandchildren.

Table of Contents

Preface 7

Part I The Story of the Promenade

In the Shadow of War 11

Claiming Credit 24

The Promenade Gets Built 29

A Threat Survived 35

Part II The Promenade through the Years: Selected Newspaper Excerpts

"How We Almost Lost the View from the Promenade" Brooklyn Heights Press, May 13, 1976 43

"Looking Back on the Heights: A Promenade for All Seasons, A Supreme Urban Vantage Point" Brooklyn Heights Press and Cobble Hill Mews, January 26, 1978 48

"The Promenade: Origins of a Miracle in Urban Design" Brooklyn Heights Press and Cobble Hill News, February 8, 1979 57

"Moses Writes Second Letter on Origins of Heights Promenade: More Material Comes to Light on Roles Played by Heights Residents" Brooklyn Heights Press and Cobble Hill News, June 21, 1979 65

"Pre-Promenade: Did an Heiress Stop Heights 'Grand Concourse'? How a Heights Legend Grew Out of Fears BQE Would Cut the Neighborhood in Two" Brooklyn Heights Press, December 10, 1981 70

"What's in a Name? 'Esplanade' Fancier Finds Vulgarity in 'Promenade'" Brooklyn Heights Press, December 10, 1981 78

"BQE Planner, Born in Brooklyn, Gained Note in Capital Region" Brooklyn Heights Press, January 14, 1982 81

"The Promenade: Was It Moses' Revenge Against the Heights?" Brooklyn Heights Press, March 4, 1982 85

"A Few Statistics" Brooklyn Heights Press, December 6, 2001 90

"Forgot My Glasses" Brooklyn Heights Press, December 6, 2001 93

Appendix: Correspondence of Henrik Krogius 97

Photographer Louise Casey 109

About the Author 112

Editorial Reviews

"...a nostalgic record of a special place." —Brooklyn Daily Eagle

From the Publisher

Krogius' relationship with the Promenade goes beyond his coverage of it in newsprint. He spent his teenage years in the Heights, and saw the Promenade's completion in 1951. In 1953, while on leave from the Air Force, he wrote to Robert Moses, New York's all-powerful "master builder," to voice his disagreement with an unpopular plan to build 70-foot warehouses on Furman Street, effectively blocking the view from the Promenade. (He received a personal, two-page reply, beginning "Dear Lieutenant," which contended that Krogius simply didn't understand the complications of zoning. The warehouses were never built.)

Brooklyn Daily Eagle