Transcripts For CSPAN3 Development Of Parkways And Freeways 20161106

So if we think about this, which is the first one of the first references to parkways in the United States. Olmstead and vox based their idea off paris. In this early conception of the parkway, they are thinking about a couple of rather simple ideas. First it is a wider than average street. Second, parkways in the early conception were usually treelined. Weve talked a little bit about boulevards and essentially a parkway in the beginning was a wide street with trees indistinguishable from the term boulevard. They are pretty much identical. The most significant difference is the name, which provided a sense of the utility of the parkway as linking a park to park. Norman newton in your text says the parkway provides the psychological carryover of the restful influence of one large park area into its echo in another with little or no interruption along the way. Right . So there is this idea of park. It is connected seamlessly with a parkway. Parkways became to be a little bit more serious with the design of this system which is anyone . The buffalo park system. Designed by olmstead in 1871. We can see on these images the parkways connecting the pieces of the park system, front, the parade and delaware park. As we talked about earlier, these early parkways were usually aligned with existing city grid forms. There is some ornamentation here in this part of the plan. But essentially they are these kind of Straight Line grid following boulevard systems. And the parkway as part of a park system spreads across the United States, seen here in chicago west park system. Reminder, jens jenson, the architect. There are gridded environments, wide streets, tree lines connecting park to park. These early park systems, as they develop over time, begin to expand and get larger and larger. The red box on here is the previous slide. We just looked at that system. We can see it extending to connect the Riverfront Park designed by kessler down to swope park, the large country park that becomes developed later on in the development of kansas city. Early parkways, key aspect here is that they are intraurban within the city. They are used to structure the inside of the city connecting park to park, downtown to park, residences to park, and early parkways having a maximum distance of about 1020 miles. Other wellknown park and parkway systems, we talk about buffalo, chicago, minneapolis, louisville, denver, seattle, essex county. All over the country people begin building these park systems and using parkways as a way to connect them. Just looking at some of the designers, of course, the olmstead firm featuring greatly kessler, Horace Cleveland in minneapolis and jenson, among others, in chicago. Landscape architecture classifies them as formal parkways, and another type which they begin to call informal parkways. What does informal mean . It basically means that they are curb linear and no longer follow the grid. The minneapolis parkway system, if you look at this plan, we have the formal system here with memorial drive. This was actually developed later as a formal parkway. A large boulevard. But here we can see the informal parkway rolling along the lakes in minneapolis. Instead of being aligned with the grid system, the informal parkways were aligned with natural features. Now we talked about this a little bit before when we were talking about park systems. But the parkway begins to be thought about as a kind of separate entity when they begin to classify them as informal parkways. John charles olmstead, whom we have talk about previously as the stepson of Frederick Law Olmsted sr. , becomes a member of the firm in the late 1880s, writes an important article on parkways called classes of parkways in Landscape Architecture magazine in 1913. He characterizes parkways at this time. It is an interesting article because its going to classify things in a way that people start to think about parkways differently. He describes them as formal and informal. And describes the informal parkway as being superior for a number of reasons summarized here. The first is that it was curval linear, aligned with natural features and adjusted to move along river channels, top topigraphical differences and boundary differences which may not be straight as well. Because they were laid out to fit the topography, they would be graded more easily than straight alignments. This would cut down on their development costs. They also did less damage to the adjacent landscape so they didnt have to grade so much around the road bed. He advocates for informal parkways as the preferred form for City Development and for planning future City Development, in part because when you had a parkway curving through a residential district. That area could then become the park for the surrounding residences. And to make this particularly effective, he says that it is worth purchasing or taking the land. And having that land under the Park Commission. The other aspect of the article that is worth looking at is he says that parkways are not just parks but they are also transportation corridors. As we talked about, weve had carriageways, pedestrian paths and bridle paths in terms of those being parts of parks. Theyve also become part of parkways as seen here in this absolutely gigantic Cross Sectional drawing. I like this Cross Sectional drawing because it kind of shows a hypothetical section of a Rapid Transit parkway or boulevard, and its literally 400 feet wide. So your average road, twolane road today is about 40 feet wide. This is 10 times the width to he says that you can begin to in this Cross Section of the parkway, we can begin to think about putting in different uses. So under here, he says we can have Rapid Transit, electric rail. Weve got tree strip so different loads of transit. We could call this today a multimodal parkway. These different areas would be divided by green trees, grass, lawn and even park. Trolleys in the 1900s are one of the preferred forms of public transportation. But i also love this drawing because right in here hes got automobile drive. So in 1913 already, John Charles Olmstead is saying, wow, we can put cars on parkways, too. So hes thinking forward. This is the thing that begins to move Landscape Architects out of the park business and into the roadway business. So lets take a closer look at one of these crosssections, again looking at a park system that you are perhaps familiar with. The emerald necklace in boston. This is a great example of an informal parkway being used as both a parkway and a transit corridor. Around 1887 when this system was initially being designed, the roads connecting the parks within the necklace included different sections. There was the arborway connecting the Arnold Arboretum to jamaica pine. Franklin park connected by another section. The riverway connecting the back bay fans to jamaica pond as well. Were going to zoom in on this section and look at that crosssection in greater detail in a second. But from this plan, i like to kind of notice that the parkway system is laid out not along the grids of boston not that boston has a lot of grids. It is an old city. But it is laid out along the corridor of the muddy river here. So it has a curvilinear path. Another characteristic is that its widened. So there is places where it actually widens out to encompass park uses. Then there is places where it gets skinner in to skinny its way in between residential areas. Whats my other characteristic here . It follows the natural terrain of the landscape. Here it is in a photograph view. This is probably from the late 1920s, early 1930s, from a book by Henry Vincent hubbard called parkways and land values which well get to in a moment. You can see the characteristic of across the asian of that crosssection. This is a beautiful, leafy scene here. Weve got lots of trees. Main carriageway. Frontage road over here. Pedestrianway or bridle path through here as well. So this kind of beautiful leafy environment that serves for both transit and for park. You can take a little stroll. If we look at this line, this is again that same section, jamaica pond is over here and here is the arborway and jamaica way to the other section. Ive got three lines here showing different Cross Sections of the parkway. We can see those here. So the red line matches the blue line, matches the green line. We can actually see how the parkway expands and contracts to meet its surroundings. So in some places it is wider. In someplace it is narrower. And we have different elements, including roadway, bridle path, walk, and the park on the side of the road. Here it is a little bit wider. So main roadway. Frontage road allowing, if i live over on the residential sides, to allow me to get on to that main roadway. So thats one of the key aspects of the boston parkway system is that it has access. In the early parkway systems, they probably live on the side of this i have direct access. I have the rights of light, air and Public Access to the roadway. That is a significant part of american parkway park systems in the late 19th and early 20th century. This will change, however, as we move to the modern parkway. So, heres a diagram showing that. So weve got streets. Weve got access from the street on to the main road. And then individual residents shown with the blue arrows can actually access that roadway as well. It is this kind of integrated system where residential areas, parks and roadway are all kind of connected in this happy kind of environment. The first modern parkway is generally considered to be this one. The bronx River Parkway. Like the parkways of the emerald necklace in boston, which were initially created as a sanitary improvement, the bronx River Parkway was an effort to conserve the polluted bronx river in Westchester County, new york. And this is a sort of scene, a nice sylvan landscape scene. But much of the bronx River Parkway initially looked like this. If we look closely here, we got peoples laundry back here, and right there, that images and outhouse. Right . So if you think about pollution, we actually have sanitary waste pretty much probably flowing down in to the bronx river down here. So in 1907, the bronx River Parkway commission, sort of like a Park Commission but a Parkway Commission, an independent agency of the city, was authorized to survey, acquire, design and construct a 16mile linear parkway along the river. Like the muddy river in boston, it was going to be a lets clean up the river project. Pollution control, sanitary, sewers, roads, park, all combined into one, and the property was acquired by 1909. They had some political and financial problems and they begin construction in 1916. Then in 1916, wham, world war i happens. So it is delayed until 1919 is when they begin to construct it. The parkway was designed by a team of designers. And in addition to the Landscape Architects, Herman Merkel and gilmore clark, was j. Downer, the engineer. The park combined both driving and the preservation of landscape and scenic features. Merkel and gilmore clark, the l. A. S, did the planting, road alignment and slope design, while jay downer, the engineer, worked on the technical aspects and a series of bridges across the parkway. In addition, along the driveway, they inserted a series of parks in the roadway along either side. And other fun facts to know there was a 40foot drive lane associated in the right of way. So looks like what weve talked about all semester in terms of parkway design. What makes it modern . This is what makes it modern. The automobile. By 1919 cars are becoming increasingly popular in the United States, and although the road was designed as a parkway, the bronx River Parkway, in contrast to its predecessors, was designed specifically for automobiles traveling at speeds of 2535 miles an hour. So what makes it modern is this. The idea of combining cars with landscape design. And we combine the features of traditional 19th century parkways with five innovations for accommodating fastermoving automobile traffic. So it is really the car that begins to transform the parkway from a scenic device, a park device, to a transportation device. This evolution is what were going to talk about for the rest of the class today. But were going to start by looking at these four innovations that begin to change the parkway. So. Number one. The first, and perhaps the most important, are the use of long curves. Lot of you guys have graded roads in your grading classes. Youve sort of done the math on this. When we look about a little trail, we can do a lot of kind of really curvywurvy zigs and zags because we are walking really slowly. As we get moving faster, sharp turns problematic when you are driving faster and faster. So as we are designing a road for faster speeds, the curves begin to be longer. You can start to see this in this aerial view of the bronx River Parkway where here is a very nice Straight Line which is anybody want to guess what that is . A railroad. Exactly. And here is the bronx River Parkway. So we can see to accommodate cars moving at 2030 miles an hour we have these broad curves connected to straightline tangent connected to long spiral curves. He creates is beautiful, sinuous line moving through the landscape. Thats change number one. Change number two is as we accommodate a wider road bed, 40feet wide. We get a wider around wider right of way. So this is a Landscape Development plan for the roadway and we can start to see two things about the right of way. First of all, it is not consistent. Its not just a consistent narrow strip running through the terrain, but it actually widens to open up to provide use sheds or actually over here to provide park experiences. And the road bed gets wider and wider. Its up to that 400feet width that John Charles Olmstead was talking about in his article. In addition number three and i like this sort of image because here we can see the local roads one of the local roads around it. You will see there is no access on to the main parkway. To accommodate faster moving traffic, we eliminate that access point. Why . Because small children are going to run out into the cars and get crushed. Right . So there is no access or what we would call limited access. So specific points are designed where you can get on to the roadway. To make this particularly useful, we start to say that were going to allow local traffic to travel over the roadway. The parkway with its beautiful sinuous curving line moves through the landscape, and we may perhaps mound up a little soil and build bridges allowing local traffic to move over that. And at specific places, design what we all know today as a freeway interchange, essentially. Here is road moving over. Here are our abutting owners. They have no right of access so they have got to come out, come down the road, come back, and get on that parkway here. That is a major kind of conceptual change in the design of roadways. And the bridge where does the bridge come from . Where have we seen that bridge before . Anyone . Central park. Exactly. The grade crossing elimination structure. Voila. The birth of the limited access roadway through the creation of these particular bridges. Right . Okay. So many interesting things here as we kind of look at this road is, wow, you kind of feel like youre out in the country. Dont you . This is beautiful like tableau. You are in a park, we have this beautiful rustic stone bridge. A little bridle path. Look at the details. The light full would post light post that can be lit at night. A lovely scene. This is one of the weird parts about parkways. Very modern. The car. The model t running through here. Yet we look like we are in a book call it passed oral bucolic pastoral setting. These do not look particularly technologically driven, do they. And in fact as we look at other features on the roadside. This looks like a nice little dutch college, doesnt it . It is a gas station. So the gas station has trellises. Doesnt exactly look like your 7eleven today. Its kind of cute. There is this idea of camouflaging almost the modern technology of the automobile with this nostalgic view of the park, parkway or countryside. This is one of the weird parts about early roadway design is, technologically it is quite advanced. It is moving at speeds. It is hard for us to think about this as something exciting, moving 25 miles an hour. But i invite you to cast your mind back to when you first started driving a car and youre driving along and it is going 25 miles an hour and you think youre going to drive into something and its kind of scary. This driving at 25 Miles Per Hour was a new sensation. Something that we dont sort of think about today. Perhaps this nostalgic stoneclad bridged environment tempered that feeling of technology somewhat. Huge success. Bronx River Parkway is embraced with a great passion. We can see postcard view. When was the last time someone sent you a postcard of a road . All right . So youre going to send a postcard. Dear auntie mae, i drove along the bronx River Parkway today. Not something we would normally do. Postcard view. Very, very popular. People would go out for the sunday drive. A couple of things to notice. No stripe down the middle of the road. Probably was a big fat freeforall. Right . So weve got traffic going in both directions on here. I think these were probably pretty exciting to drive on. In addition to recreation so we have the idea of the park, people driving along this scenic landscaped boulevard for recreation. The other thing people realize is, wow, i can actually use this to get places. People begin to sort of say, i can be on a bumpy old dirt road somewhere, or i could be on the modern parkway with a concrete or asphalt surface and i could be flying along here. So people begin to realize that these are convenient. And around the parkways just as we see with the development of parks, the minneapolis park system, people want to live next to the parkway. Because you have access to recreation, to parks, you also have access to transportation. So it spurs residential construction. Everywhere a parkway was built, houses began to build up and people began to realize that they can use these roads for commuting. So the landscape is a social and economic success. More parkways soon followed in its wake. Perhaps one of the most famous was the Westchester County park and parkway system which was an extension of the bronx River Parkway. So bronx River Parkway is down in here, and Westchester County takes the idea of parkways and runs with them and creates a whole series of parkways. Saw mill River Parkway. Hudson River Parkway. All managed by the Westchester County Park Commissioners. This is a little bit different from the way we view roads today which are usually managed by Highway Commissions, county engineers. Or that behemoth, the department of transportation, the d. O. T. They are not managing early parkways, the managers are, right . Because of this, aesthetics are really important. If we look at a series of crosssections of the Westchester County park system, we can see hutchinson, saw mill, bronx river, bronx parkway extension. They are these leafy environments. So weve got roadway, the roadway in many cases is actually a very small percentage of the actual parkway system. Were hopping on the parkways. Were driving to parks, were driving to other peoples houses and these are aesthetic experiences, not just transportation experiences. New york also spawns the long island parkway system. This is designed initially not as nydot, but ny state park system. So the state parks with robert moses, who is a rather famous builder, developer, in new york, designs in his early years of work the new york long island parkway system. And what this system did was connected manhattan. People living in manhattan, out to the beaches of long island. We talked about this earlier in our national and state park lecture about jones beach state park. Places like this which were these massive recreational facilities and people could hop on their car in the bronx, get on the central parkway, midtown, southern parkway, and come out to the beaches. Still popular. 350,000 users in one summer day in 1936. Who knew there were that many cars in new york at the time . Two view sheds. A couple of things we are beginning to see here in terms of design. We are beginning to start to think about not just one highway arch but two for traffic in two directions. Were starting to expand the ideas ideas. And here again, that delightful freeforall in terms of striping. That will start to see some modifications here in a minute. I like to call the 1930s the heyday of the american parkway. The american modern parkway. And there is a couple of things to think about in terms of what constituted the popularity and certain characteristics of the parkway. First of all, i think one of the things that the american parkway during this time period was, it was a collaboration between engineers, Landscape Architects, and architects. Engineers did the technical work, the laying out of the roads, the spiral curves, the bridges, the grades, Landscape Architects talk about the planting design, the view sheds, the way you would experience this roadway. Architects would provide the bridges and structures in an artistic sensibility. Unlike early parkway systems, they are large and theyre actually beginning to think about regions instead of being intraurban, they begin to be interurban. They begin to connect different places, connect cities. And the third thing is they begin to function as planning tools. People start to say, wow, were going to use the parkway to think about developing not just the city but the region around it. Out of the urban and out of the heyday of the parkway, two major types of parkways emerge. First is what i call urban or regional parkways, and the second are National Park service or scenic parkways. So were going to talk about both of these. The first, urban and regional, have a couple of characteristics. The first characteristic is that they increasingly, following the 1930s, begin to focus on transportation over recreation. The second is they are located in and around urban areas. And the third is that they are limited access. A couple of examples. The merritt parkway in connecticut, thatbaltimore parkway between baltimore and washington, d. C. In the midatlantic region. Were going to look at the merit parkway and the taconic parkway. Number one, merritt parkway, i like this example because it begins to show how parkways which were initially more park oriented begin to change to accommodate changing aspects of the urban environment. This is a great view of the merritt parkway. One of the hills coming down. You can see some of its innovations which included curbs along the roadside to facility facilitate drainage. You can see sort of that it is a pretty leafy environment. The other thing you can actually see is we are beginning to get what we would now call a highway median, to prevent people from driving over in to other peoples lanes. So the merritt parkway is over twice the length of the bronx River Parkway. Its 38 miles long. It was designed under the direction of the connecticut state Highway Commission. So no longer being designed by Park Commissions, but now there is a Highway Commission involved. Thayer chase was the architect for the right of way. And Leslie Sumner was the structural engineer. A couple of differences. 38 miles. We can see parkways getting longer. They are beginning to connect different things. It has a 300foot consistent right of way which expands in some places to become a little bit wider, in part, because we are now creating a larger margin median. Design speed. 50 to 60 miles an hour. What does that do . That begins to think about flatteni the curves. The quicker we go, the more gentle we want the curves, otherwise youre going to spin off of them. Another thing is that begins to happen is they begin to get an 8 grade so they become less steep. 8 , thats about the slope of a handicapped ramp. It is not like they are completely deadlevel either. Another view of the merritt. You can see here that 300foot right of way was 100 feet wider than the Westchester County parkways, but the transportation intent of the merritt was also seen in fact that the right of way was consistent throughout its length without widenings for recreational areas. There were no walking or riding paths, bridle paths, along the side. It was now simply the two lanes of automobile traffic. Regional in scope, it was designed to connect new york city and new residential communities in connecticut. It went through fairfield and new haven counties. One of its major uses was to provide ease of movement through coastal communities, coastal towns, which previously had these sort of little connecting roads. Now you could move relatively easily from the merritt parkway to the bronx River Parkway, down into new york and manhattan. It was very much a commuter road, which it is still today. The merritt parkway is still used. The other aspect is the divided roadway. The divided roadway was two 26foot wide concrete lanes, separated by a median that ranged from relatively narrow to 22 feet wide. An interesting innovation was they began to use reflectors on the curbs to guide people at night, so the headlights would reflect off the curbs and you could tell where the edge of the road is. Presaging all of that reflecting paint that we all now have an the side of our roads today. As you can see here, lots of plantings in the middle of the roadway. At the time, critics described the planting design as lavish and sensitive in the 1950s when it reached maturity. The road today is still known for its plantings of flowering dogwood and its kind of logo is a little flowering dogwood blossom for the merritt parkway. It is known for its unique plantings. Finally, the bridges on the merritt parkway were extremely carefully designed. Not one of them is the same. Each one has a different architectural character to it. You can start to see each one had a distinct architectural flair. When i lived in connecticut i used to drive the merritt parkway quite often. This is my personal favorite. There is a pair of giant angel wings in one of the bridges in the center. Another one is a metal bridge with spider webs on the metal work. There are these beautiful, beautiful kind of landmarks as you drive down road. So this is very much an aesthetic experience. Right . So youd be surrounded by flowering dogwood trees, looking at angel wings which are going to take you to heaven after you crashed. These were meant to be kind of beautiful experiences. Just fun facts 68 bridges along the parkway, each one completely unique. Detailed in a variety of styles. Moderne, art deco, art nouveau, various architectural styles. In contrast, was the taconic parkway. The taconic parkway kind of continued the Westchester County parkway system which was down here, and it connected into bronx river, Westchester County parkway system and it connected new york city with the capital of new york, albany. It runs up the east side of new york. And it is about 80 miles in length, and it was begun in the 1930s. However, world war ii intervened. It is not completed until the 1950s. Id like to talk about the taconic parkway as an example of the intraurban parkway because it does a couple of things. First, it connects to the parkway system. Second, it begins to pioneer new changes to parkway design to make them faster, safer, more convenient. And third, it brings us toward the post war era. The taconic parkway crosses through parts of the mountainous east coast, if you will, of new york. Through the catskill mountains. So you can see that the grading of this road was pretty difficult in some places. One of the ways they handled the grading was to separate the two drive lanes, north and southbound traffic lanes. They have very, very large median structures here. And the two alignments of the roadway were completely independent. So they are on completely different alignments. So this side of the roadway does one thing, the other side of the roadway does something completely different. So it is sort of like threading two roads in a wide right of way. The divided roadways are reflected in the bridge designs which all have two arches in a Center Support situated within the median. Of course, these are the places where the two roadways come together because you dont want really gigantic bridges. Right . And here you can see sort of recent developments where the scenic quality of the roadway is largely lost. Series of larger bridges which cross rivers. And blasted in some places actually through rocky terrain. So they actually came in with dynamite, explode the road and situate the roadside next to the road. Because of the dramatic terrain, sheet flow was no longer possible in terms of the design. So they design new drainage system for this roadway as well. You can see catch basins and culverts. I love the culverts. Were still in camouflage mode. No ones actually going to see this because it is on the roadside. So it is the outfall from the water flows in to here, and it flows out, but were still cladding it in beautiful stone masonry. So the detail, construction detailing on this is very interesting. Another strategy in contrast to the taconic parkway, the curb is now a mountable curb which allows disabled vehicles to jump over the curb and get up on to the grassy road shoulder. Were thinking about how to manage traffic when somebody breaks down. How do you get people out. You have a mountable curb which allows it. And, here is a wonderful view of the taconic parkway where we can start to see that engineering, the beauty of engineering and that sort of lovely curvature. So two independent roadway alignments separating here. The wider these are, reduces headlight glare. Headlights are not shining into your eye which was more of a problem when the roads are closer together. We can start to see limited access becoming easier. So these Access Points begin to get wider and wider to allow you to accelerate on to the traffic which is moving at 60 miles an hour. So these new smoother geometries begin to evolve here. What is the nature of that to geometry . Okay. Everybody, were going to go into math world here for a moment. After the 1930s, parkways like the taconic parkway begin to experience these changes that we talked about. Faster speeds, widening ride of ways, longer distances and flattened curves. The other things that they change are the geometries of road design. Ive got two diagrams here. This is from christopher tunnard, mad main america, chaos or control, a great book published in the 60s or 70s about changing aesthetics in american environments. They have a great section on highway design. So if youve laid out a road or a trail in your grading class, one of the things you know is that you have to go back to your geometry. We talk about you put a Straight Line down. Here weve got a river. These are indicating topography. Create Straight Lines about where you want your road to go, then you connection them with arcs. That circular arc. There is a point of tangency where the curve meets the tangent. Right . So that was how parkways were laid out prior to the 1930s. Just like roads. Right . Have roads and connect them up. As you go faster and faster though, one of the things which begins people begin to realize is that this point of tangency creates a little bit of difficulty in driving. So a new idea is promoted in the 1930s to the 1950s which are spiral curves. So that instead of having a Straight Line with a tangent, you can actually just connect the two spirals by themselves. Because the geometry, there is no longer this kind of Straight Line. This is an interesting aesthetic difference, again from tunnards book, where here we have radial geometry, Straight Line, curve, tangent design here in the road. And here we have a spiral curve. The tangent gives you this little kink in the road where youre meeting the curve and the tangent line. And the spiral curve creates this incredibly smooth line within the landscape. So it has two benefits. One is it creates this smooth driving curve, easier to drive. The other is visually it removes these funny little kinks which you begin to perceive as you are going faster and faster. You actually start to see this. So if you want to think about experiencing this, think about a highway ramp. An onramp. Try the intersection down highway 30 this is my favorite place to experience this highway 30 and interstate 35. You are driving on the onramp and its got that nice swooping curve. You kind of make that little jog in your steering wheel, right . Youre actually experiencing a spiral curve there. Right . Because your radius is not consistent. Your radius changes. So we begin to pioneer new geometry to change to accommodate the vehicle and accommodate new speeds. Just stop for a moment and kind of think about this. Weve talked about the development of new typologies, of landscape typologies, and we go from the country park with capability ground to the public park. We go from the parkway connecting Prospect Park to another park in brooklyn, to a parkway designed for Rapid Transit. We see Landscape Architecture creating new kinds of landscapes which hadnt previously existed. Okay. So, look, ma, no kinks. A couple other aspects about urban and regional parkways. As we design things like the taconic the taconic has a number of large Parks Associated with it. It was used for tourism to get people from new york up into the catskills. It still cuts through a lot of rural areas. But part of the reason for creating the taconic parkway was to connect the commercial stronghold of new york city to the capital, albany. So people could have this convenient transportation, particularly in the 1930s, prior to common air traffic. So urban and regional parkways increasingly become used for commuting traffic. And, initially they are intrastate. Theyre usually done by a state Highway Commission. Not a Parkway Commission but a state Highway Commission. Other ones we talked about baltimore, washington, if anyones been in new jersey, the garden state parkway is another great example of an intrastate parkway system. Regionally and locally, lilac way in minnesota. Anyone from minnesota here . Twin cities . Otherwise known as highway 100. Whats lilac way is now one of the major commuting routes in the twin cities. One of your assignments online in your reading, in your syllabus, there is a link to twin Cities Public Television pbs video on lilac way. So thats an assigned video. Do not forget to watch that. That talks about ccc construction. Wpa, cwa, depressionary construction of highway 100. Okay, any questions so far . Were rolling through this really rapidly today. Okay. Second kind of parkway. Nps scenic parkways. These roads were existing in contrast to the urban and regional parkways. They are quite different because they were almost exclusively built for recreational and scenic preservation and focus. They had much less emphasis on regional traffic patterns and shaping of urban growth patterns. In their focus, they tended to be on the experience of the drive and the experience of the driving through a beautiful scenic area in an automobile. A couple of differences. They have generally larger rights of way. Large rights of way. Usually situated within parks to provide for maximum preservation of scenery. They built on traditions, not only of park design in urban areas, but park design in National Parks. So if we see this image here, this is going to the sun road in glacier National Park. Other roads like paradise road in mt. Rainier. The park service had a tradition of providing access to scenic and difficult terrain. And when automobiles become increasingly important, they hop on the bandwagon and begin to design roads which are, in some cases, interstates, but in it the extreme cases, begin to link different states. And speeds are slower on nps parkways because you are touring. You are not getting somewhere. You are looking at the scenery. Meant to also enhance the recreational nature of travel. There was strong attention to coordinated signage and interpretive signage. In part, because of the Park Services traditions in interpreting landscapes. And they are extremely large and long. And because of this, they take a long time to construct. And they focus on scenic preservation and in some cases cultural preservation. A few key examples. One of the earliest was mt. Vernon memorial parkway. I dont believe this was initially built by the National Park service, though it is now managed by the National Park service. But again, it was a parkway, a scenic and culture preservation parkway meant to take visitors from washington, d. C. To hartfords president s home. A couple of other ones which i would put in to this category, which are not necessarily nps parkways but are scenic parkways, is the great river road which runs up the coast of minnesota, runs up the coast of the entire mississippi from minnesota to the gulf of mexico, was actually a failed park Service Project to create a parkway on both sides of the mississippi river. The new Columbia River highway in oregon is another example on the west coast, which is a state road. So were going to look at two landscapes here. The first is colonial parkway and the second is the blue ridge which some of you have been on. Colonial parkway. Colonial parkway is one of the earliest National Park parkways. It was designed to connect jamestown, site of the first landing of the virginia colony, you know, pocahontas. And yorktown which was the site of the surrender of the revolution. In the 1930s, the National Park service said, wow, we should be getting into the historical park business and they began to build parks in the east coast. And to get people between these two Historic Sites, they decided to create a parkway. You can see the right of waylaid out here. And in the middle was williamsburg which at the time was being constructed by the Rockefeller Family as a reconstruction of the colonial capital. So colonial parkway was designed to connect these two Historic Sites and also to connect williamsburg. The design is a pretty interesting design. And it encompassed both scenic and Historic Preservation and new ideas about road technologies. Nps designers were kind of at the forefront. On the one hand, the access bridges, the Great Crossing elimination structures were designed using colonial brick. They actually created a series of brickyards in virginia. This is during the 1930s where they would create brick in the traditional colonial process. Each brick was handmade so not machine manufactured with that kind of hand craftsmanship we talked about in terms of rustic design, so as you would drive down the parkway, you would see these colonial style, though nobody built a colonial style bridge like that for an automobile in the 1700s, but we have that sort of material characteristic. The road bed was designed in concrete, and exposed aggregate, so it has a kind of pebbled texture and a yellow color to kind of mimic historic road perhaps, historic railroad. Gravel road. Though it was, again, designed for car speeds of around between 30 and 50 Miles Per Hour depending on the section. In contrast, a series of bridges were designed to cross over the tidal estuaries which flood from the james river, and these were designed in modern concrete, so that when you looked down the roadway, you would see colonial style bridges, but if you looked out your car window, as you were driving along the road, you would see modern concrete style bridges. The here is a view of one of those bridges. We can see this kind of streamlined modern farms, we forms, we talked last week about modern architecture and the idea of the machine, these bridges were paired down, simple to those bridges. We can see this kind of streamlined modern farms, we forms, we talked last week about reflect the machine age, and if we think about the curves on this lovely chevy and the curves here, we can sort of think about those two designs being similar perhaps. In addition, the creeks were all demarcated, significant Historic Sites were demarcated with interpretive signage as well. Very much this experience of driving through the wooded uplands along the rivers, out across tidal marshes, beautiful drive between these two Historic Sites. On a much larger scale was the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Blue Ridge Parkway was conceptualized as a way to connect shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks and travels across North Carolina and tennessee. It is 469 miles long, and was built between the 1930s and it is 469 miles long, and was built between the 1930s and finally finished in the 1970s. The designer, the landscape designer involved in addition to a whole series of architects and engineers, somebody who is generally given credit for much of the design is stanley abbott, a well known Landscape Architect in the park surface. The parks service. He had begun his work in the 1930s on the Westchester County parkway system. And during the depression, moved into National Park service as a career. And he did much of the design work. The Blue Ridge Parkway, in addition to its great length, is known for some of its heroic engineering. One of the major elements is a giant viaduct which crosses a particularly steep area of mountainous terrain and we see this beautiful road winding through the steep slopes of appalachia. The blue ridge mountains. Much of it was built during the depression, these kind of handmade walls again reflected, National Park service, rustic architecture and naturalistic landscape design. Plantings were planted to heal roadside scars, great care was taken in designing views and view sheds. The road was known also for its Cultural Resource preservation. There was a desire along the roadside to try to capture some of the crafts and farming practices and open fields, agricultural aspects of the landscape. The project was also notable for its attempt at public relations, ok. So cutting across 500 miles, gaining property, you know, buying property from individual farmers proved to be rather difficult, right. And in many of these communities, people did not want to interact with the gmen or the men from the government, right . So one of the things they ended up doing is they pioneered the use of the conservation easement where they couldnt purchase land on either way, widen that right of way, they would purchase an easement to the land that would allow them to preserve the view shed. Today, this is a practice widely known for protection of things like wetlands, natural areas, as well as view sheds. At the time it was one of the revolutionary practices created by the Blue Ridge Parkway. Norman newton describes this pretty completely in his text. Okay. So parkways, Blue Ridge Parkway finished in 1970 as one of the last major parkways constructed by the National Park service. Natches in mississippi lingers on, also 500 mile road along a former indian trail, also extensive, but by the 1970s, people werent building parkways anymore. And i said the 1930s were the heyday of the parkway, and indeed Blue Ridge Parkway begun in the 30s, finished in the 1970s, this long road. Why does it take so long . Why do parkways fall off after the 1930s . For a couple of reasons. After world war ii, there is an increasing emphasis in the country on transportation. As people begin to use roads less for scenic travel, and more for getting from point a to point b, peoples priorities in roadway design changed. And in the 1940s and 50s, there was an Engineering Movement away from the parkway to something called the complete highway. And i love the phrase, the tagline for the complete highway movement, which was safety, utility, economy, and beauty, all parts in harmony. Which sounds really great, except for the fact that there is three quarters of this pragmatic function and one quarter is devoted to beauty. Right. So the idea of an aesthetic experience of roadside driving really begins to fall off in the more rapid pace of the post world war ii era. And engineering begins to become the name of the game for roadway design, right . And were concerned with traffic speeds, with safety, all of those trees in the roadside, those are fixed hazardous objects, right. Thats not a tree. Thats a fixed hazardous object. When you run into a fixed hazardous object, youre likely to die. So if we can choose between a Beautiful Tree and a dead person, were going to take out the tree and not have a dead person. Right. So we begin to move toward this idea also promoted by architects where form follows function. If the roadway follows its function to get from point a to point b, it will by nature be beautiful. Right . So thats how we end up with the word parkway moving to freeway, through way, expressway. Thruway, expressway. So you can see that change in the way we talk about roads, right. Freeway, through way, it is about speed. So roads get increasingly flatter, increasingly longer, and at the same time, in the post world war ii era, under the eisenhower administration, people begin to say, you know what, we do need better roads. We need roads that we can connect our cities with in case of moments of Great National emergency. Right. And thus the federal aid highway act, also known as the National Interstate and defense highway act, occurs in the 1950s and we have the first project in the United States and interstate 94, view shed of that road being opened. And here, is what the freeway, thruway, expressway looks like in contrast to the parkway. What is it . It is the curves begin to be so flat as to be nonexistent. They become increasingly straight. Because straight is better. We now begin to design curves just to keep it interesting enough to make sure that you dont fall asleep on the roadway when youre driving back home after a long week at school, right . Youre commuting back to on highway 80 or 35. We have curves primarily to manage not a view shed, but curves to manage you as a driver as waking up. We eliminate the planting along the roadside, right. Because it is going to collect snow, it is going to hide view sheds. In some places, particularly in cities, this is highway 94 in st. Paul, between minneapolis and st. Paul down here, minneapolis is over here, we eliminate the planting. We sync the road so that cross traffic can conveniently move over. Bridges are no longer arch ways, constructed for an aesthetic experience, but rather to be as convenient as possible. Right. And so we have a very different change in our roadway design. And social attitudes are changed as well. You think about the bronx River Parkway, and that sort of experience of joy and excitement and driving a car for a first for the first time as a Recreational Activity, how many of us think about driving a car as a Recreational Activity anymore . We dont, right. It is not fun. I think my father was the last person i knew who liked to go for a sunday drive, right . Pile the kids in the car and torture us, right . Car trips were not recreational for me. So driving is no longer a gee whiz activity. So for me, as i teach you, teaching people some of who are going to be Landscape Architects, i think the lesson here is that with the loss of aesthetic goals for the roadway comes a loss of the world for the Landscape Architect. It is not something that our profession does a lot of anymore. And engineers are the profession of choice, the profession of function, and they are not too concerned about the aesthetic experiential concern, right. I think this is a loss. Many people spend hours and hours of their lives on freeways and commuting. Right. And we can sort of think about that bubble in the car that were sitting in or we can think about the nature of the roadside along it. And i think there is a lost opportunity here for taking back these environments and thinking about them as possibly an environment that is not a sterile environment where youre in your bubble, but perhaps it can change the way that you think about driving that road as a designer and as a driver. And what if, what if we took just a tiny little bit more, right, maybe not 31, safety, economy, utility and beauty, but what if we start to think about changing these environments so that they too could be productive and green. What if they generated solar energy. What if they became places for prairies, which have habitat. How can we as a Landscape Architecture profession begin to change this environment that we all spend a lot of time in, and to something that is more productive for the environment, and more beneficial to the human beings who move through them. And i say looking back to the heyday of the parkway is one way to think about that. Cool. And we are done, five minutes early. You just got five minutes of your life back. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] eve, americantion history will travel back in time with road to the serous rewind. Road to the white house rewind. We will bring your Campaign Films from the 1956 campaign of Dwight Eisenhower through the 2000 election between al gore and george w. Bush. Nd tuesday at 8a p. M. Eastern time on American History tv on cspan 3, providing context for todays Public Affairs issues. Tucson, arizona, is known as americas longest inhabited city. We take you to the presidio to learn more about the different eras ot ehf the citys history. We are at the tucson presidio. And this is where metropolitan tucson springs from. The presidio itself looks darn close to what was here to begin with. I would like to say the soul of the presidio is in each of these bricks. They do contain dirt from the original presidio. The tower is really good. So, its a real effective place. Whats really wonderful about e fact it isis th built on the spot where the actual presidio stood. On the ground, we have an outline of where the wall was. Due to modern construction standards, the new wall is offset. The whole perimeter of the presidio is marked. You can take a walk downtown and see where it was. The design goes back to roman times. The spanish do it a certain way and they follow that way all the way up. Pile after pile of adobe bricks. They are not worried about the native peoples attacking them. They are worried about the british, the russians invadi