Rackstraw Downes: Under the Gowanus with Sanitation Department Towers (1999)

Gowanus is a neighborhood in Brooklyn. “The Gowanus Expressway, which serves as the southern extension of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, also connects the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel approach, the Prospect Expressway (NY 27), the Belt Parkway and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Although guide signs and maps refer to this segment of I-278 as the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, it is known locally as the Gowanus Expressway” (source). “The name Gowanus is thought to derive either from Gowane, a Canarsee tribe leader, or the Dutch word for bay, gouwee. Gowanus Bay was actually the first Dutch settlement in Brooklyn, established in 1636″ (source).