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This overpass was rebuilt about a decade ago, but plenty
of 1964 era truss-mastarmed poles are still hanging around. Only
this section of the LIE, from around 108th St. to the Van Wyck
interchange at the east end of Flushing Meadow Park, was adorned
by these graceful, clean, but fragile poles. The rest of the
LIE had simple untrussed crookarm masted poles, with the poles
a mixture of hex and round standards, all of which were knocked
off after 1964 in favor of the bigloops. The trussarms only other appearance on the LIE was along the spill lanes leading to and from the Clearview interchange, but the center median twinlampers there were regular untrussed crookarms. While the Flushing Meadow trussarms originally held mercury M400's and Westie Silverliners, the Clearviewers held mercury Model 3438-2 cuplights. The highrise buildings visible to the right are the Forest Hills Houses, a public housing project built around 1971. At the time, it's construction caused an uproar in Forest Hills, with the community fearfull of the poverty and crime they expected such a project to produce, not to mention the lowering of property values. The racially charged fight that ensued made the political career of a former Pittsburg Pirates farmhand, Mario Cuomo. The last building to the right of the LIE, visible behind the overhead signs, doesn't belong to the project. The bottom line though, is that the project did NOTHING. No damage was done to this area and this project is probably the most placid public housing on earth. The privately owned Lefrak City a few blocks west of here went through a lot more grief over the years, at least through the 80's. I'm so out of it now, not very Rego Park/Corona/Forest Hills oriented at all. |
| The massive trussed overhead signs spanning the eastbound lanes date from the late 60's, when big and massive were still beautiful. Just past the buildings is the Grand Central interchange and out of view, to the left, is Corona, where Louis Armstrong lived. |
