East River Drive Research Paper

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt East River Drive hugs the east side of Manhattan from 125th St in Harlem to the Battery underpass at the southern tip of the island, a 9 1/2 mile roller coaster gone urban megastructure. Approaching from any of the bridges across the East River, the highway twists and bends, rises and falls, its back a striped mosaic parade punctuated regularly by taxi yellow. From the vantage of the Williamsburg Bridge in particular, hundreds of feet in the air and a half-mile or so away, we can see it as Robert Moses and his engineers did in the 1930's, before the first sections were actually built-silent, in miniature, a logical arterial for a congested urban grid. The road's smooth curves follow the contours of the island;