Even before Joyce Anderson steps onto the Brooklyn Bridge, she is swept up by the crowd.

She squeezes onto a narrow pathway clogged with pedestrians and cyclists that leads to the bridge from the Brooklyn side.

“This is human rubbernecking,” said Ms. Anderson, 57, a social worker.

This squeezebox-like corridor has long served as the unofficial welcome to the Brooklyn Bridge for those coming to it from its namesake borough. More functional than charming, it is a particularly soulless stretch of concrete that was known as “the cattle chute”— funneling people to the crossing even if they did not enjoy it. Compared with the nicer Manhattan entrance, which opens onto verdant City Hall Park, the Brooklyn entrance seemed like a grim afterthought.

But now a serious makeover by the city is transforming this dreaded corridor into a grand portal lined with shade trees and wildflowers. It will widen and improve pedestrian and bike lanes, and install a new drinking fountain and signs showing the way to the bridge. It will also replace the aging infrastructure below the street, a process that will include laying electrical lines for new streetlights.

“Finally, Brooklyn gets a little sprucing up,” said Jasmine Wilson, 52, a borough resident who walks across the bridge every day.