The American Institute of Architects is looking to supplant the idea of replacing the Gowanus Expressway with a tunnel, and instead proposes a suspended highway and formation of a Gowanus Greenway. In 2006, the Dept. of Transportation gave a green light to a $12.8 billion proposal to build a 3.5 mile, seven lane tunnel underneath the Brooklyn Waterfront and then destroying the elevated highway. The plan for a Gowanus Tunnel appears to be in perpetual......

Early Sunday morning, 20 cars were involved in a pile up on the Gowanus Expressway near 40th Street. While the damage to the cars was minor and no one was seriously injured, the suspicion was that a hose that had been left on by construction workers caused icy road conditions during the unseasonably cold night. Water is used to help set concrete. Today, the Post reveals that state highway officials are investigating the matter. It......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a 4-alarm brush fire on Staten Island, a missing child report at 3rd Ave. and East 117th St. in Manhattan, and a stabbing on Boston Road in the Bronx. Finding parking in NYC requires a guide. Here it is (garage parking only). Street parkers must continue to survive on guile, cunning, and skill. The winning $105 million Mega Millions lottery ticket was sold at at The Magazine Store on......

Gridskipper solicited picks for the city's ugliest buildings from eleven architecture-minded New Yorkers. The list includes Astor Place’s The Sculpture for Living building (which replaced a parking lot), the Queens Citicorp Building, the Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building), the AT&T Building on Church St., the Cross Bronx Expressway and anything by Trump – but the Trump World Tower isn't really that ugly. Someone even mentioned the Hearst Tower. Wow. Gothamist thinks these structures......

Sad and insane day on the Gothamist Newsmap: "Baby found DOA in Garbage" in the Bronx, a bank robbery in Cobble Hill, and an unusual incident on Riverside Drive: "2 PEOPLE FIGHTING AND DOUSING EACH OTHER WITH GASOLINE AND ATTEMPTING TO IGNITE IT." Here's an unusual method of pedagogy: New York blogs as assigned reading. Tales of skullduggery at the Idiotarod: "The blonde girl on that team, Rebecca, tried as hard as she could......

Yesterday morning, a truck drove into a column on a Gowanus Expressway overpass and burst into flames. The driver was rescued by two other drivers on the road who saw the accident - an off-duty firefighter and a computer technician. Firefighter Donald Casey and Jon Kalleberg managed to pull the driver, Franklin Montes, from the truck's rig before its fuel tanks exploded. Montes was screaming about his broken leg, but as Casey told the Daily......

The Post reports on two motorcycle deaths yesterday. Ivette Hernandez was killed after being thrown off her boyfriend Louis Perez's motorcycle on the Gowanus Expressway. According to the Post, a car had swerved towards them, and when Hernandez fell, another motorcycle in their group hit her. Perez, who was supposed to propose to her that day, was charged with DUI and "blamed the accident on a motorist trying to merge into traffic." And Lamar Leonard......

Remember yesterday when we thought the body-count for last weeks heat wave was at 10-13 people? Yeah, scratch that. Coroners for the City are now upping that number by ten to 20-23 deaths. The three-body spread is due to suspicious looking circumstances which the coroner is looking at extra closely before blaming on the high temperatures (a man in his 30s found under the Gowanus Expressway and a 82-year-old woman and her 47-year-old son......

Get ready to open your mind to a new culinary experience. Prepare yourself to take a trip to a neighborhood that the subway doesn’t reach for a treat you’ve never tried. Don’t you think it’s about time you tasted a frozen, chocolate-covered mini key lime pie on a stick? I do. The streets of Red Hook, Brooklyn are practically bustling these days. The massive new Fairway Supermarket has opened its doors, traffic can seen bumping......

A trailer transporting models to a fashion shoot became a trailer of near death, as one model fell onto the Gowanus Expressway at 50 MPH after accidentally opening an exit door. How did such a mistake occur? Tatyana Simanava had been using the trailer's bathroom, which has two doors, one back to the trailer and one to the outside, useful for shoots once the trailer is safely parked. She apparently was "disoriented" about which door......

Could it be true? The New York Post is reporting that the DoT has approved a plan to build a 3.5 mile, $12.8 billion, seven lane tunnel under the Brooklyn waterfront, and then demolish the existing Gowanus Expressway. If funded, the project could be complete in about 15 years. Since Robert Moses approved construction of the expressway over a disused elevated rail in 1939, the highway has been a huge headache for the city.......

Starts and Fits has a great comparison of two photographs of the corner of E89th and Lexington-- the first was taken in 1913, the second in 1991. As you can see, the sidewalk decreased in width by about 75%, and the stoops and first-floor entrances of each building were eliminated entirely. The block used to have a wonderful, airey feel-- but with the widening of the street, it's now one of the more congested,......

Gothamist loves the NY Times article about the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge New York Region > A Bridge Too Fat" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/nyregion/18bridge.html">being too fat, because for a moment, we thought, "Hey, that's not nice, calling a bridge fat!" But then it was actually an interesting (and a little scary) look at how the suspension bridge is being re-engineered, with new technology and materials, to make sure it can support the traffic in the future. For instance, Robert Moses......

Kevin Walsh, Forgotten NY...

That Marty Markowitz - he's always coming up with some new and crazy idea. Like signs at Brooklyn's exit points that say, "Leaving Brooklyn...Fuhgeddaboutit." The NY Post reveals the wacky Brooklyn borough president's thinking - "Once you enter Brooklyn, there's no good reason why you should ever leave" - and goes on to point out that many Brooklynites (and sports teams) do leave in fact, and it's possible that one in four Americans has roots......