Interstate 678 - History

History

The Whitestone Bridge opened on April 29, 1939, and at the same time the Whitestone Parkway, leading southwest off the bridge to Northern Boulevard (NY 25A), was opened to traffic. Work was rushed to serve the 1939 New York World's Fair, which first opened the following day. At its north end, the bridge connected to Eastern Boulevard (later known as Bruckner Boulevard) by way of an extended Hutchinson River Parkway, which had ended in Pelham Bay Park prior to the early 1940s. The portion of the Hutchinson Parkway south of Bruckner Boulevard and all of the Whitestone Parkway were converted to Interstate Highway standards in the early 1960s to allow for commercial traffic, at which time the Whitestone Parkway was renamed the Whitestone Expressway, and the Hutchinson River Parkway was renamed the Hutchinson River Expressway.

The Whitestone and Hutchinson River Expressways were designated as I-678 c. 1965. Early plans for I-678 had the highway following the Astoria Expressway, a proposed freeway that would run along the NY 25A corridor from I-278 to the Grand Central Parkway. This project was later cancelled. Meanwhile, the Van Wyck Expressway was built in the early 1950s to connect then-New York International Airport with the Grand Central Parkway. The highway was built over Van Wyck Boulevard (formerly Van Wyck Avenue). The original street and the freeway were both named after former New York City Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck.

In the early 1960s, the Van Wyck Expressway was extended northward to meet the Whitestone Expressway at NY 25A. Work on the Van Wyck Expressway Extension, as it was originally known, began c. 1962 and was completed by the following year. I-678 was extended southward over the Van Wyck Expressway to JFK Airport on January 1, 1970.

While designated as a three-digit auxiliary Interstate Highway, I-678 never intersects with its ostensible "parent" interstate, I-78. Originally, I-78 would have continued eastward through New York City from its current terminus at the Holland Tunnel along the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway and over the Williamsburg Bridge to Queens, where it would have followed the Bushwick Expressway past the southern end of I-678 to Laurelton. From here, it would have continued northward on an extended Clearview Expressway to the Bronx. These plans were mostly cancelled by the late 1960s, leading to the truncation of I-78 to the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway (I-278) on January 1, 1970, and eventually to its current end at the east portal of the Holland Tunnel.