Roadways. She talks about how the innovations were used in the development of americas freeway system. Today we are looking at the development of roads. You probably know that you dont know a lot of Landscape Architects who do roads. Its not something we appreciate with Landscape Architecture but it wasnt so. Well start with a little bit of review in this familiar landscape which every one should recognize. We look at the Central Park and we look at Prospect Park which was boxes next great park in the late 1860s. They designed roads associated with this park. Originally suppo to be four. Two were built. Here is a view of Ocean Parkway from 1894. Its a wider than average street. Its wider. They were usually tree lined. We talked a bit about boulevards and a parkway in the beginning was a wide street with trees indistinguishable from the term boulevard. They are pretty much identical. The most significant Aspect Or Difference is the name which provided a sense of the utility of the parkway as linking a park to park. Theres this idea of park. Its connected seamlessly with parkway. Parkways became to be a bit more serious with the design of this system which is, anyone . Yeah. The buffalo Park System. Right. Designed by on stead in 1871. We can see on these images the parkways connecting the pieces of the Park System, the front, the Parade And Delaware park and as we talked about earlier, these early parkways were aligned with existing City Grid forms. They are these straight Line Grid following boulevard systems. The parkway as part of a Park System spreads across the United States seen here. 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 River Front Park designed by kessler and it becomes developed later on in the development of kansas city. Early parkways, key aspect here is they are intraurban within the city. They are used to structure the inside of the city connecting park to park, downtown to park, residents to park and early parkways have a maximum distance of about 10 to 1020 20 miles. We talk about buffalo, chicago, minneapolis, essex county. All over the country people began building Park Systems and using parkways as a way to connect them. Just look at some of the designers, the firm featuring gately kessler, cleveland in minneapolis and jansen and others in chicago. As parkways develop, Landscape Architects classify them spoo two super bowls. The ones we have been looking at known as formal parkways and another type which they begin to call informal parkways. We have the formal system here with memorial drive. This was developed later as a formal parkway. Here we can see the informal parkway rolling along the lakes in minneapolis. We talked about this before when talking about Park Systems. The parkway begins to be thought of as a separate entity when they begin to classify them as informal parkways. John charles who we talked about previously as the stepson becomes a member of firm in the late 1880s. Its an important article on parkways called classes of parkways and Landscape Architecture. He characterizes parkways at this time. Its an interesting article because its going to classify things in way that people start to think about parkways differently. He describes the informal parkway as being superior for a number of reasons summarized here. Adjusted to move along river channels and other natural features and property boundaries which might not be completely straight as well. Because they were laid out to fit the topography. He advocated for informal parkways. That area could then become the park. Wrong way. Having that land under the park mission. The other aspect of the article thats worth looking at is he says parkways are transportation corridors. Those being parts of parks. It show a hypothetical section. Its about four or five feet wide. A multimodal. Its one of the preferred modes of transportation. Its on parkways too. Hes really thinking forward. This is the thing that begins it. And around 1887 when this system was initially being designed the roads connecting the parks within the necklace included different sections. Franklin park. From this point, the Parkway System is laid out. Its widened. Theres places where it widens. Into residential areas and 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 20s, early 30s from a book by henry Vincent Hubbard called parkways and land values. Thats what were getting into in a moment. Its got lots of trees, Frontage Road over here. If we look at this slide, this is, again, that same section. Jamaica pond is over here. Here is the arbor way and jamaica way. We can see those here. Some places its wider. Some place its narrower. We have different elements including roadway, bridal path, walk and the park on the side of the road. Thats one of the key aspects of the boston Parkway System is that it has access. If i 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. Sheer a diagram showing that. Weve got streets. We have access from the street onto the main road and individual residents shown with the blue arrows can access that roadway as well. Its this kind of integrated system where residential areas parks and roadway are all kind of connected with this happy kind of environment. The first modern parkway is generally considered to be this one. The Bronx River Parkway. The Bronx River Parkway was an effort to conserve the polluted Bronx River in Westchester County, New York. Much of it initially looked like this. If we look closely here, we have Peoples Laundry back here and that image is an out house. We think about pollution, we have sanitary waste flowing down into the Pron X River down here. 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 16 mile linear parkway along the river. It was going to be a lets clean up the river park. They had political and financial problems and they begin construction in 1916. Then in 1916, wham. World war i happens. Its delayed until 1919. They begin to construct it. The parkway was designed by a team of designers and in addition to the Landscape Architects, Herman Merkle and clark was the engineer. Merkle and clark, they did the Planting Road align M And Slope design while the Engineer War worked on the technical aspects and series of bridges across the parkway. They inserted a series of parks in the roadway along to either side. Other Fun Facts to know, it was a 40foot Drive Lane associated in the right of way. Started like what we have been talking 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 preds ses sors were designed specifically for automobiles traveling at speeds of 25 to 35 miles an hour. What makes it modern is this. The idea of combining cars with landscape design. We combine the features of traditional 19th century parkways with five innovations for accommodating faster moving automobile traffic. Its really the car that begins to transform a parkway from a scenic device, a Park Device to a transportation device. This evolution is what well talk about for the rest of the class today. Well start by looking at these four innovations that begin to change the parkway. Okay. Number one, the first and paps the most important are the use of long curves. A lot of you have graded roads in your graded classes and youve done the math on this. When were looking at little trail, question do a lot of really curvy zigs and zags because were walking slowly. As we get moving faster, sharp turns become problematic when driving faster and faster. As were driendesigning a road faster speeds, the curves begin to be longer. You can start to see this in this aerial view where here is a very nice straight line which is, anybody want to guess what that is, a railroad and here is the Bronx River Parkway. To accommodate cars moving at 20 to 30 miles an hour, we have these broad curves connecting to straight lines connected to broad spirl curves. It creates this beautiful line moving through the landscape. Thats Change Number one. Change number two is as we accommodate wider roadbeds, 40 feet wide, we get a wider and wider right of way. 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, its not consistent. Its not just a consistent strip running through the terrain. It actually widens to open up to provide sheds or over here to provide park experiences. The roadbed gets wider and wider. Its up to that 400 Feet Width that John Charles was talking about in his article. In addition, number three, i like this sort of image because here we can see the local roads, one of the local roads around it. Youll see theres no access onto the main parkway. To accommodate faster moving traffic, we eliminate that access point. Why . Small children will run out into the cars and get crushed, right. Theres no access or what we call limited access. Specific points are designed where you can get on the roadway. The parkway moves through line and we mound up a little soil and build bridges allowing local traffic to move over that. At specific Places Design what we all know today as a freeway interchange. Here is road moving over. Here are our budding owners. They have no right of access. They got to come out and come down the road, come back and get on that parkway here. Where have we seen that bridge before . Central park. The great crossing structure. Viola. The birth of the limited Access Roadway through the creation of these particular bridges, right. The interesting things as we look at this road is, wow, you kind of feel like youre out in the country dont you. Its this beautiful park. Youre driving down and we have this beautiful ruster stone bridge. 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 were in a landscape. These do not look particularly technologically driven, do they . In fact, as we look at other features on the roadside, this looks like a nice little dutch cottage, doesnt it . Its a Gas Station. The Gas Station has trellises. Doesnt look like your 7eleven today, does it. Its kind of cute. Theres this idea of camouflaging almost the modern technology of the automobile with the nostalgic view of the Park Parkway or country side. This is one of the weird parts about early Roadway Design is technologically its quite advanced. Its moving at speeds. Its hard for us to think about this. I invite you to cast your mind back to when you first started driving a car and youre driving along and its going 25 miles an hour and you think youre going to drive into something and its kind of scary. 25 miles an hour was a new sensation. Perhaps this stone clads Bridge Environment tempered that feeling of technology somewhat. Huge success. Its embraced with a great passion. We can see postcard view. When was the last time someone sent you a postcard of a road. Youre going to send a postcard. I drove along the Bronx River Parkway today. All right. Not something we would normally do. Postcard view. Very, very popular. People would go out for the sunday drive. A couple things to notice, no stripe down the middle of the road. Probably was a big fat free for all. We have got traffic going in both directions on here. I think these are probably pretty exciting to drive on. In addition to recreation, we have the idea of the park. People driving along this scenic Landscape Boulevard for recreation. The only thing people realize is wow, i can use this to get places. People begin to sort of say, i can be on a bumpy old Dirt Road somewhere or i can be on the mod Erp Parkway with a Concrete Or Asphalt surface and flying along here. People begin to realize these are convenient. Around the parkways, people want to live next to the parkway. You have access to recreation, to parks. You also have access to transportation. It spurs residential construction. Remember parkway was built, houses begin to build up and people realize they can use these roads for commuting. 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. 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 all managed by the Westchester County Park Commissioners. This is a little bit different from the way we view Roads Today which are managed by Highway Commissions. County engineers or that department of transportation, the d. O. T. They are not managing early parkways. Mark kmigers are managing parkways. Because of this, aesthetics are important. It becomes increasingly important. If we look at series of crosssections from the Westchester County Park System, we can see hutchinson, sawmill, Bronx River, bronx parkway extension, they are these levee environments. So we have roadway, the roadway in many cases is actually a very small percentage of the actual Parkway System. So were hopping on the parkways, driving to parks, 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 Nydat But Ny state Park System. So the state parks, robert moses who is a rather famous builder, developer in New York designs in his early years of work the New York long island parks Parkway System. 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 State Park Lecture about jones beach state park, places like this which are 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. So 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 so a couple things were beginning to see here in terms of design, were beginning to start to think about not just one highway arch, but two for traffic in two directions. So were starting to expand the ideas and here again that delightful freeforall in terms of striping. We will start to see some modifications here in a minute. So i like to call the 1930s the heyday of the american parkway, american modern parkway and there is a couple of things to think about in terms of what what constituted the popularity and certaincharacteristics of the parkway. One of the things that i think the american parkway was during this period 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 thought about the Planting Design, the View Sheds, the way you would experience this roadway, architects would provide the bridges and structures, right, and an artistic sensibility. Unlike early Parkway Systems they are large and theyre actually beginning to think about regions instead of being intra urban they begin to be inter urban, begin to connect different places and connect cities. The third thing is they begin to function as planning tools. So 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, the 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 Merit Parkway in connecticut, taconnic parkway in New York, baltimore Washington Parkway in the midatlantic region. We will look at two of these. The Merit Parkway and the taconnic parkway. So number one Merit 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 Merit Parkway, one of the hills coming down, you can see some of its innovations which included curbs along the roadside to facilitate drainage and you can see that its a pretty leafy environment. The other thing that you can see is we are beginning to get what we would now call a Highway Median to prevent people from driving over into other peoples lanes. So the Merit 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. Okay . So no longer being designed by Park Commissions but now there is a Highway Commission involved. Thayer chase was the Consulting Landscape Architect for right of way, George Dunkel Berger was the Architect And Leslie sumner was the structural engineer. A couple of differences. Okay. So 38 miles, we can see parkways getting longer, theyre beginning to connect different things. It has a 300 foot 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 flattening 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. Okay. 8 , thats about the slope of a handicap ramp. So its not like theyre completely dead level, either. Another view of the merit. 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 that the right of way was consistent throughout its length without widenings for recreational areas. And there were no Walking Or Riding paths. 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 and one of its major uses was to provide ease of movement through coastal communities, coastal towns which previously had these little connecting roads and 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. So the Merritt Parkway is still used. The other aspect is the divided roadway which weve talked b the divided roadway was two 26footwood concrete lanes separated by a median that ranged from relatively narrow to 22 feet wide. And an interesting innovation was they began to use reflectors on the curbs to guide people at night so the head lights would reflect off the curbs and you could tell where the edge of the road is. Pre staging all of that reflective paint that we now have on the side of our Roads Today. As you can see here lots of plantings in the middle of the roadway and at the time critics described the Planting Design as lavish and sensitive in the 1950s when it reached maturity and the Road Today is still known for its plantings of flowering dogwood and its kind of logo is a Flowering Dogwood Blossom for the Merritt Parkway, so its known for its unique plantings. Finally the bridges on the Merritt Parkway were extremely carefully designed and not one of them is the same. Each one has a different architectural character to it. This i think is a habs hair drawing documenting the River Bridge and Newton Turnpike and you can start to see each one had a distinct architectural flare. 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 on one of the bridges in the center. Another one is a Metal Bridge with spider webs on the metalwork and there are these beautiful, beautiful kind of landmarks as you drive down the road. So its very much an aesthetic experience, right . So you would be surrounded by flowering dogwood trees, looking at the angel wings which are going to take you to heaven after you crashed and, you know, these were meant to be kind of beautiful experiences. Fun facts, 68 bridges along the parkway, each one completely unique, detailed in a variety of styles, modern, art deco, art nouveau, various architectural styles. In contrast there is the taconnic parkway parkway. The taconnic 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. So it runs up the east side of east side of New York. It is about 80 miles in length and it was begun in the 1930s, however, World War ii intervenes and its not completed until the 1950s. Id like to talk about the taconnic parkway as an example of the intra urban parkway because it does a couple of things. First it connects to the Parkway System, second it begins to pioneer new changes to a Parkway Design to make them faster, safer and more convenient. Third is brings us toward the postwar era. The taconnic parkway crosses through parts of the mountainous east coast, if you will, of New York flew the Cat Skill mountains and 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, and 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 its 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 and a Center 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 a new Drainage System for this roadway as well. So you can see catch basins and culverts i love the culverts. Were still in camouflage mode. No one is actually going to see this because its on the roadside so its the outfall from the water flows into here and it flows out, but were still cladding it in beautiful stonemason ri. So the construction detailing on this is very interesting. Another strategy in contrast to the taconnic 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. So 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 taconnic parkway where we can start to see that engineering, the beauty of engineering and the sort of lovely curvature. So two independent roadway alignments separating here and the wider these are reduces Head Light Glare so the head lights are not shining into your eye which was more of a problem when the roads were 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 geometry . Okay, everybody, were going to go into Math World here for a moment. After the 1930s Park Waist like the taconnic parkway begin to experience these changes that weve talked about, faster speeds, widening right of wais, longer distances and flattening curves. The other things they change are the geometries. The geometries of road designs. This is a great book published in the 60s or 70s about changing aesthetics in american environments and they have a great section on highway design. So if you have 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 and we talk about you put a straight line down so here weve got a river, these are hatures indicating topography, create straight lines about where you want your road to go and then you connect them with arcs, that circular arc and there is a point of Tan Jensy where the curve meets the tangent. That was how parkways were laid out prior to the 1930s just like roads. Have roads and connect them up. As you go faster and faster, though, one of the things which begins to people begin to realize is that this point of Tan Jensy creates a little bit of difficulty in driving so a new idea was 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, different, again, from 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 youre going faster and faster and you actually start to see this. So if you want to think about experiencing this, think about a highway ramp, an on ramp. Try the intersection down highway 30 and this is my favorite place to experience this, highway 30 and 35, interstate 35 and youre driving on the on ramp 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 because your radius is not consistent, your spiral radius changes. So we begin to pioneer new geometry to change to accommodate the vehicle and accommodate new speeds. So just stop for a Moment And Kind of think about this. Weve talked about the new typologies and we go from the Country Park with Capability Brown to the public park. We go from the parkway connecting Prospect Park to another park in brooklyn to a Parkway Design 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 taconnic, now, the taconnic 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 taconnic parkway was to connect the commercial stronghold of New York city to the Capital Albany so people can have this convenient transportation, particularly in the 1930s prior to common air traffic, right . So urban and regional parkways increasingly become used for commuting traffic and initially they are intrastate, usually done by a state Highway Commission, not a Parkway Commission but a state Highway Commission. Other ones we talked about baltimore, washington, if anyone has been in New Jersey on 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. Okay . It was lilac way, is now one of the major commuting routes in the twin cities. And 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. Okay. And that talks about ccc construction, cwa, Depression Era Construction of highway 100. Okay. 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 and they are quite different because they were almost exclusively built for recreational and scenic Preservation And Focus and 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 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. When automobiles become increasingly important, they hop on the bandwagon and begin to design roads which are in some cases intrastates, but in the extreme cases begin to link different states. Design speeds are slower on nps parkways because you are touring, youre not getting somewhere, youre 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. They focus on scenic preservation and in some cases cultural preservation. A few key examples, one of the earliest was mt. Vernon memorial parkway. This is i dont believe actually initially built by the national Park Service although its now managed by the national Park Service, but, again, it was a parkway, a scenic and cultural Preservation Parkway meant to take visitors from washington, d. C. To our first president s home. Colonial parkway, the blue Ridge Parkway and the naches trace. A couple of other ones which i would put into 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 cost of the entire mississippi from minnesota to the gulf of mexico, it 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, sacagawea not sacagawea pocahontas, right . 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. To get people between these two historic sites they decided to create a parkway and you can see the right of waylayed 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 its encompassed both scenic and historic preservation and new ideas about Road Technology so that nps designers were kind of at the forefront. On the one hand the access bridges, the grade crossing elimination structures were designed using colonial brick and they actually created a series of brick yards in virginia so this is during the 1930s where they would create brick in the traditional colonial process so each brick was handmade so not machine manufactured with that kind of Hand Craftsmanship we talked about in terms of national Park Design, rustic Park Design, this idea of the craftsmanship. As you would drive down the parkway you would see this colonial style, although nobody built a colonial style like that for an automobile in the 1700s. We have that characteristic. The roadbed which was designed in concrete and exposed aggregate so it has a pebbled texture and a yellow color to mimic historic road, perhaps, a historic Prafl Road although 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. Here is a view of one of those bridges. We can see this streamlined modern forms. We talked about modern architecture and the idea of the machine. These bridges were paired down simple to reflect the Machine Age and if we think about the curves on this lovely chevy and the curves here we can certainly think about those two designs being similar perhaps. In addition the creeks were all demar dated, significant historic sights were Dee Mark dated with signage as well. Very much this experience of driving through the wooded uplands along the rivers out across tidal mmarshes, a beautiful drive. 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. Its 469 miles long and it 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 wellknown Landscape Architect in the Park 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. He did much of the design work. The blue Ridge Parkway in addition to its great length is known for some of its per roque engineering. One of the major elements is a giant viaduct which crosses a particularly steep area of mountainous terrain and we can sort of 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 tried 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. So cutting across 500 miles, gaining property, you know, buying property from individual farmers proved to be rather difficult. In many of these communities people did not want to interact with the g men or the men from the government, right . One of the things that they ended up doing was they my owe neared 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 19d 70 was one of the last major parkways constructed by the national Park Service. Naches Trace Parkway in mississippi lingers on also 500 Mile Road along a former indian trial, also expensive, but by the 1970s people werent building parkways anymore. I said that 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 reasons. After World War ii there is an increasing emphasis in the country on transportation and 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 change. 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 Tag Line 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 theres three quarters of this pragmatic function and one quarter is devoted to beauty. 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 and were concerned with traffic speeds, with safety. All of those trees in the roadside, those are fixed hazardous objects. Thats not a tree, thats a fixed hazardous object. When you run into a fixed hazardous object you are 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 . Okay. So we begin to move forward 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 . Okay. So thats how we end up with the Word Parkway moving to freeway, through way, expressway. We can see that change in the way we talk about roads. Freeway, through way, its about speed roads get increasingly flatter, increasingly longer and at the same time in the post World War ii era under the Eisenhower Administration people start to say we do need better roads. We need roads that we can connect our cities with in cases of moments of great national emergencies, 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, a View Shed of that road being opened. Here is what the freeway, thruway, expressway looks like in contrast to the parkway. What is it . Its the curves begin to be so flat just 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 . So youre commuting back to on highway 80 or highway 35. We have curves primarily to manage not a View Shed, but a curve to manage you as a driver as waking up. We eliminate the planting along the roadside because its going to collect snow, its going to hide View Sheds. In some places particularly in cities this is highway 94 in st. Paul between minneapolis st. Paul is down here, minneapolis is up here, we eliminate the planting. We synch the road so that crosstraffic can conveniently move over. Bridges are no longer archways constructed for an aesthetic experience, but rather to be as convenient as possible. And so we have a very different change in our Roadway Design. And social attitudes are change 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, i mean, how many of us think about driving a car as a recreational activity anymore . We dont. Right . Its 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 . It was not car trips were not recreational for me. So driving is no longer a gee whiz activity. So, you know, for me as i teach you as a practicing Landscape Architect teaching people, some of who Landscape Architects i think the lesson here is that with the loss of aesthetic goals for the roadway comes a loss of the role for the Landscape Architect. Okay . Its not something that our profession does a lot of anymore. Engineers are the profession of choice, the profession of function and they are not too concerned about the aesthetic experiential concern. 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. I think theres a lost opportunity here for taking back these environments and thinking about them as possibly an environment thats not a sterile environment where you are in your bubble but perhaps it can change the way that you think about driving that road as a designer and as a driver. What if what if we took just a tiny little bit more, maybe its not three to one, 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 into something that is more productive for the environment and more beneficial to the human beings who moved through them . Id say looking back to the heyday of the parkway is one way to think about that. Cool. And we are done, five minutes early