Vincent F. Albano, Jr. Playground

The ground beneath your feet at the Vincent F. Albano Jr. Playground was originally cleared in the nineteen sixties for one of the city's most ambitious, yet ultimately failed, engineering projects. This site was designated to become part of the Mid-Manhattan Expressway, an elevated highway intended to slice through the dense urban landscape to connect the Queens-Midtown Tunnel with the Lincoln Tunnel. Massive amounts of land were acquired for the project's right-of-way, but intense public opposition eventually forced the city to abandon the expressway entirely. This small corner survived the highway plans, finding new life as a community park rather than a transit corridor.