Associate with Landscape Architecture but it wasnt always so. In fact, the modern freeway that you guys drive every day has its roots in Landscape Architecture in the park planning that weve been talking about this semester. Ill start with a little bit of review and this familiar landscape which everyone should, i hope, recognize, which of course is Prospect Park. So we look at the development of central park. Then we look at Prospect Park, which is olmsteds next great park in the late 1860s. They designed roads associated with this park. These were intended to be broad treelined streets spinning off the edges of the park in here. There are originally supposed to be four. Two are actually built eastern and Ocean Parkway. And here is a view of Ocean Parkway from 1894. 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 of fauch avenue in paris. So if youre thinking of alfond and housmans work earlier. 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. Its wider. Second, a parkway in the early conception were usually treelined. And 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. So theyre 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. Norman newton in your text says the parkway provides the, quote, psychological carryover of the restful influence of one large park area into its echo in another with little or no interruption along the way. Ooms. 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 . Yeah, yeah. The buffalo park system, right . Designed by olmsted and vox in 1871. We can see on these images the parkways connecting the pieces of the park system, the front, the parade, and delaware park. As we talked about earlier, these early parkways were usually aligned with existing city grid forms. So 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 designer. And kansas city park system. And again, there are gridded environments, wide streets, treelined, connecting park to park. These early park systems, as they develop over time begin to expand and get larger and larger so 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 10 to 20 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 classify them into two parks. The ones weve been looking at known 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. And john olmsted as we talked about the stepson of olmsted sr. Becomes a member of the film in the late 1880s writes an important article on parkways called classes of parkways in Landscape Architecture in 1913. He characterizes parkways at this time, and its an interesting article because its going to classify things in a way that people start to think about parkways differently. And 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 curvilinear, as we talked about, and aligned with natural features and adjusted to move along river channels, topographical differences, and other natural features and property boundaries which might not be completely straight as well. Because they were laid out to fit the topography, they could be graded more easily than straight alignments. So this would cut down on their development costs. They also did less damage to the adjacent landscape, so you didnt have to grade so much about the road bed. So 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. Oops, wrong way. 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. And as weve talked about, weve had carriageways, pedestrian paths and bridle paths we talked about in terms of parks. They also have become part of parkways, as seen here in this absolutely gigantic crosssectional drawing. I like this crosssectional 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, so this is 10 times the width. And within this, 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 a tree strip, so different modes of transit. We would call this today a multimodal parkway. These different areas would be divided by green. Trees, grass, lawn and even park. Okay . So 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 1913 already, John Charles Olmsted is heard as saying, wow, we can put cars on parkways, too. Hes thinking forward. And 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 Cross Sections. 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. And around 1887 when this system was initially being designed, the roads connecting the parks within the necklace included different sections. There was the arbor way connecting the Arnold Arboretum to jamaica pond. Franklin park connected by another section and the riverway connecting the back bay fence to jamaica pond as well. And were going to zoom in on this section and look at that Cross Section in greater detail in a second. But from this plan, id like you 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 because its an old city, but its laid out along the corridor of the muddy river here, so it has a curvilinear path. Another characteristic of it is that its widened, so there are places where it actually widens out to encompass park uses, and then theres places where it gets skinnier to skinny its way in between 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 park values and land buys. And we can see the character within that Cross Section. Its a beautiful leafy scene here. Weve got lots of trees, main carriageway, frontage road over here, pedestrian or bridle path through this way as well. Its kind of a beautiful, leafy environment that serves both transit and for park. You can take a little stroll. If we look at this slide, this is, again, that same section, jamaica pond is over here, and heres the arbor way and jamaica way to the other section. And 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, right . So in some places its wider, in some places its narrower, and we have different elements including roadway, bridle path, walk and the park on the side of the road. Here its a little bit wider. Main roadway, frontage road allowing, if i live on the residential sides, allowing me to get onto 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, if i live on the side of this, i have direct access. I have the rights of light and air and Public Access to the roadway. Okay. 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. We have streets, access to the street from the main road, and the individual residences shown with the blue arrows can actually access that roadway as well. Its kind of this 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. And like the parkways of the emerald necklace in boston, the which were initially created as a sanitary improvement, the bronx River Parkway was an effort to conserve the polluted bronx river in West Chester 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, okay. If we look closely here, weve got peoples laundry back here, and right there that image is an outhouse, right . So if you think about pollution, we actually have sanitary waste pretty much probably flowing down into 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 16myelin yar 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, financial problems, and they began construction in 1916. Then in 1916, wham, world war i happens. Its delayed until 1919, which 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 jay downer, the engineer. And the park combined both driving and the reservation of landscape and scenic features. So merkel and Gilmore Clark 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, there was a 40foot drive line situated in the right of way. 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 25 to 35 miles an hour. Okay. So what makes it modern is this. The idea of combining cars with landscape design. Right . And we combine the features of traditional 19th century parkways with five innovations for accommodating faster moving automobile traffic. So its really the car that begins to transform the parkway from a scenic device, a park device to a transportation device. And this evolution 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. Okay, so number one. The first, and perhaps the most important, is the use of lawn long curves. A lot of you have graded roads in your grading classes, and you have sort of done the math on this. When were looking at a little trail, we can do a lot of curvy wurvey zigs and zag ises because were walking quite slowly, right . As we get moving faster, sharp turns become problematic when youre driving faster and faster. So as were designing a road for faster speeds, the curves begin to be longer. And 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 20 to 30 Miles Per Hour, we have these broad curves connected to Straight Line connected to broad spiral curves, right . And it creates this beautiful, sinuous line moving through the landscape, okay. Thats change number one. Change number two is as we accommodate a wide erode bed, 40 feet wide, we get a wider and wider right of way. So this is a Landscape Development plan for the roadway. We can see two things about the right of way. First of all, its not consistent. So its not just a consistent narrow strip running through the terrain, but it actually widens to open up to provide view sheds or actually over here to provide park experiences. And the roadbed gets wider and wider, right . Its up to that 400 feet width that John Charles Olmsted 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. And youll 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 the roadway. And in fact to do this, to make this particularly useful, we start to say that were going to allow local traffic to travel over the roadway. So the parkway with its beautiful, sinuous curving line moves through the landscape. And we may perhaps mound up a little soil and build bridge ace loug local traffic to move over that. And at specific places, design what we all know today as a freeway interchange. Essentially, right . So heres road moving over. Here are abutting owners. They have no right of access. So they have to come down, and get on the 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, right . The grade crossing elimination structure, okay. 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 beautiful tableau in a park youre driving down. We have this beautiful rustic stone bridge. A little bridle path there. You youve got to love the details. Look at that, the delightful wood lightpost. They 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 were in a bucolic, pastoral landscape. These do not look particularly technologically driven, do they . Right. In fact, as we look at other features on the roadside, this looks like a nice little dutch cottage, doesnt it . It is a gas station, okay. So the gas station has trellises. It doesnt look like your average 7eleven, does it . Its kind of cute. There is the 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, its quite advanced, right . Its moving at speeds. Its 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 its going 20 miles an hour and you think youre going to drive into something and its kind of scary. This driving at 25 miles an hour was a new sensation, something we dont sort of think about today. And 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 a postcard view. When is the last time someone sent you a postcard of a road . Youre going to send a postcard. Dear auntie may, i drove along the bronx River Parkway today. All right . Not something we would normally do. So a 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. Otherwise, a big fatfree for all. 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. And people begin this i can be on a bumpy old dirt road somewhere, or i can be on the modern parkway with a concrete or asphalt surface and i can be flying along here. So people begin to realize 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 the parkway was built, houses begin to build up, and people begin 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 West Chester County park and parkway system which was an extension of the bronx River Parkway. So the bronx River Parkway is down in here, and Westchester County takes the idea of park ways and runs with them. And creates a whole series of parkway. Sawmill parkway, hutchinson River Parkway, all managed by the West Chester 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, right . Or that behemoth, the department of transportation, the d. O. T. , i dot, mdot, odot. The dots, right . Because of this, aesthetics are really important. The nature of these landscapes becomes really important. If we look at a series of Cross Sections from the West Chester County park system, we can see hutchinson, sawmill, 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. So were hopping on the parkways. Were driving to parks, were driving to other peoples house, 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 robert moses, new yorks rather famous builder developer in new york designs in his early years of work the new yorklong island parkway system. And what this did is connect manhattan. People living in manhattan out to the beaches of long island. We talked about this earlier in our National State park lecture, jones beach state park, places like this were these massive recreational places. Get on the midtown southern parkway and come out to the beaches. So popular. 350,000 users in one summer day in 1936. Right . Who knew there were that many cars in new york at the time. Two view sheds. So a couple of things were beginning to see here in terms of design. Were beginning to start to think about not just one highway arch but two in terms of traffic extension. Were starting to expand the ideas, and here, again, that delightful freeforall in terms of striping. That will start to see some modifications here in a minute. So i like to call the 1930s the heyday of the american parkway, the american modern parkway. There are a couple 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 engineer, 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 structure, right . And an artistic sensibility. Unlike early parkway systems, they are large. Theyre actually beginning to think about regions. Instead of being intraurban, they begin to connect different place, connect cities. And the third thing is they begin to function as planning tools. People 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 the 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 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 or around urban areas, and the third is that they arent limited access. A couple of examples. The merritt parkway in connecticut. Teconic parkway in new york. Baltimore to washington parkway between baltimore and washington, d. C. Obviously in the midatlantic region. And were going to look at two of these. The merritt parkway and the taconic parkway. So number one, merritt parkway. I like this example because it begins to show how parkways were which were initially more parkoriented 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 curves along the roadsides to facilitate drainage, and you see sort of its 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, right, to prevent people from driving over into 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 nonk no longer being designed by Park Commissions, but there is a Highway Commission involved. Chase was the consulting landscape for the landscape for the right of way. George dunkle was the architect and Leslie Sumner was the structural engineer. And a couple of differences. Okay, so 38 miles. We can see parkways getting longer. Theyre 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 were 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 curve, right . The quicker we go, the more gentle we want the curve, 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 handicapped ramp. So its not like theyre completely dead level either. Another view of the merritt. You can see here that 300foot right of way was 100 feet wider than the West Chester County parkways. But the transportation intent of the merritt was also seen in the fact that the rightofway was consistent through its length without widenings for recreational areas. And 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, and 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. And now you could move relatively easily from the merritt parkway to the bronx River Parkway down into new york and manhattan. So it was very much a commute erode, which it is still today. So the merritt parkway is still used. The other aspect is the divided roadway, which we talked about. The divided roadway was two 26 wide concrete lanes which narrowed to 22 feet wide. And 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 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 plants 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 drawing documenting Saugatuck River ridge and newton turnpike. You can 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 in the center. Another one is a metal bridge with spiderwebs on the metal work. And there are these beautiful, beautiful kind of landmarks as you drive down the road. So its a very much aesthetic experience. You would be surrounded by flowering dogwood trees looking at the angel wings that will take you to heaven after your crashed. They were meant to be a kind of beautiful experiences. And just fun facts to know, 68 bridges along the parkway, each one completely unique there is detail in a variety of styles, modern, art deco, 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, West Chester County parkway system. And it connected new york city with the capital of new york, albany. So it runs up the east side of new york. And its about 80 miles in length. It was begun in the 1930s. However, world war ii intervened. It was not completed until the 1950s. I like to talk about the taconic parkway as an example of the interurban parkway because it does a couple things. First, it connects to the parkway system. Second, it begins to pioneer new changes to a parkway design to make them faster, safer, more convenient. And third, it brings us toward the postwar era. The taconic parkway crosses through parts of the mountainous east coast, if you will, of new york through the catskill mountains. 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 lengths, north and southbound traffic lanes, and they have very, very large median structures here. And the two alignments of the roadway were completely independent, right. 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 rightofway. The divided roadways are reflected in the bridge designs which all have two arches and 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. And here you can see sort of recent developments where the scenic quality of the roadway is largely lost. A 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 designed a new drainage system for this roadway as well. So you can see catch basins and culvert. I love the culverts. Were still in camouflage mode. No one is actually going to see this, right, 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 stonemasonry, right. 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, okay. 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 senior 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. And the wider these are reduces headlight glare, right . Youre not shining, the headlights are not shining into your eye, which is more of a problem when the roads are closer together. And 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. Right . So these new smoother geometries begin to evolve here. What is the nature of that, the geometry . Okay. Everybody, were going to go into math world here for a moment. After the 1930, parkways like the taconic parkway begin to experience the change that we talked about. Faster speeds, widening right of ways, longer distances and flattened curves. The other thing that they change are geometry. The geometries of road design. Ive got two diagrams here. These are from christopher tonnard. Mad made america, chaos or control which is a great book published in the 60s or 70s about changing aesthetics in american environment. They have a great section on highway design. So if you have laid out a road or a trail in your grading class, right, one of the things you know is 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 hat shores, right . We havent seen hat shores since day one indicating topography. You create Straight Lines indicating where you want your road to go. And then you collect them with arcs, right . That circular arc. And there is a point of tangency. 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 tangentsy creates a little bit of difficulty in driving. So a new idea is promoted in the 1930s to the 1950s which are spiral curve, right. So instead of having a Straight Line with a tangent, you can actually just connect the two spirals by themselves, right . Because the geometry, there is no longer this kind of Straight Line. And 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, right . And the spiral curve creates this incredibly smooth line within the landscape. To so its two benefits. One 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. You actually start to see this. So if you want to think about experiencing this, think about a highway ramp, an onramp, like try the intersection down highway 30. This is my favorite place to experience, this highway 30 and 35, interstate 35. And youre 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, your spiral radius changes. So we begin to pioneer new geometry to change to accommodate the vehicle and accommodate new speeds, right. So just stop for a moment and kind of think about this. We talked about the development of new typeologies. And we go from the country park with brown to the public park. We go from the parkway, connecting Prospect Park to another park in brooklyn to a parkway designed for Rapid Transit, right. We see Landscape Architecture creating new kinds of landscapes which hadnt previously existed. It was used for tourism. You get people from new york up into the catskills. It still cuts a lot of rural areas. Part of the reason for the parkway was to connect the commercial stronghold so people could have this convenient transportation prior to air traffic, right . Urban and regional parkway is increasingly becoming used for commuting traffic. Additionally there are state highway issues. A state Highway Commission. The garden state parkway thats an example of an intrastate away,way system. Regionally and locally. Lilac way in minnesota. Anyone from minnesota here . Twin cities. One of the major commuting routes. One of your assignments in your reading, in your sill byllabus, theres a link to pbs video on lilac way. Thats an assigned video. Do not forget to watch that. Any questions so far . Were rolling through this today. Second parkway. Nps scenic parkways. These roads are in contrast, and they are quite a difference because they were almost built for recreational and scenic preservations and focus. Theres emphasis on regional traffic patterns and shaping of urban growth patterns. They tend to focus on the experience of the drive and the experience of the driving through beautiful scenic area in an automobile. They have generally large rightsofway. Generally 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. If we see this imable here, this is going to the sun road. Other roads like paradise road in mount rainier. They provided scenic roads in difficult terrain. When automobiles become increasingly important, they hop on the bandwagon and begin to design roads which are in some cases interstates, but in the extreme cases, begin to link different states. Youre touring. Youre not getting where interest. Looking at the steering. It also enhances the recreational tunnel. The strong attention to coordinated signage and interpretive signage. In part because of the Park Services traditions in interpreting landscapes. Because of this they take a strong they take a scenic preservation. A few key examples, one of the earliest was mount vernon memorial parkway. I dont it was initially built and now managed by nasa home service, and, again, it was a parkway, a scenic and cultural preservation parkway managing to take visitors from washington d. C. To our first president s home. Colonial parkway, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the nachez trace. There were other ones that i would put into this category that 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. The new river highway and another example on the west coast. Were going to look at two landscapes here. The first is corniel parkway and the rest is blue ridge. Some of you have been on that. Colonial parkway. Colonial parkway is one of the earliest National Parkways. Yorktown. The revolution. The National Park service said, wow, you should be getting into 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 rightofway laid out here, and in the middle was williamsburg, which at the time is being constructed by the rockefeller family. It was a reconstruction of colonial capitol. Colonial parkway was designed to connect these two Historic Sites and also to connect williamsburg. The design is an interesting design. It was built out of new roads technology. On the one hand the access bridges, the Great Crossing elimination structures were designed using colonial brick, and they actually created a series of brickyards 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. That kind of hand craftsmanship that we talked about in terms of National Park design, rustic park design, the craftsmanship. As you see the colonial style, its material characteristics. The road was designed in concrete, and exposed aggregate. It has a pebbled texture and a yellow color to mimic a historic road perhaps. A historic gravel road, although we began design for cars of around 30 and 50 Miles Per Hour depending on the section. It was built around tide aales tidalestuarises. If you looked on the your car window as you were driving along the road, you would see modern concrete style bridges. You can see the kind of line that is about modern archite architectu architecture, and the idea of the machine these bridges were paired down and simple to reflect the machine age, and if we think about the curve on the lovely chevy and you think about the two designs being similar, perhaps. The significant Historic Sites, so very much this experience of driving through the along the rivers out across tidal marshes and a beautiful drive between these two Historic Sites. On a much larger scale was the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was a way to connect shenandoah and travels across North Carolina and tennessee. Its 469 miles long. Every and was built between the 1930s and finally finished in 1970s. The designer landscape designer involved the whole series of architects and engineers on someone who is given credit. Stanley abbott, a well known Landscape Architect in the park service. He had begun his work in the 1930s on the Westchester County parkway system. 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 can see this beautiful road winding through the steep slopes of appalachiana on the blue ridge mountains. Architecture and naturalistic landscape. Great care was taken in designing views. The project was also notable for its attempt at public relations. Okay . 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 gmen or the men from the government, right . One of the things that thended up doing is they pioneered the use of the easement where they couldnt purchase land and either way widen that rightofway. 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. Its one of the last major parkways constructed by the National Park service. Nachez tres parkway in mississippi lingers on. Also 500 mile road along a former indian trail. Also extensive. By the 1970s people werent building parkways anymore. This long road. Why do parkways fall off after the 1930s . For a couple of reasons. After world war ii increasing the country 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 change. In the 1940s and 1950s there was an Engineering Movement away from the parkway to something called complete highway. All parts in harmony. Okay . Which sounds really great except for the fact that there is threequarters of this pragmatic function and onequarter is devoted to beauty. It begins to fall off in the more rapid pace of the post world war ii era. Engineering begins to become the name of the game for roadway design, right . All of those trees in the road signs, those are fixed hazardous objects. Thats a fixed hazardous object not a tree. When you run into a fixed hazardous object, you are likely to die. 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 . It will by nature be beautiful, right . Okay. So thats how we end up with the word parkway moving through freeway, freeway, expressway. We can see that change chaenk in the way we talk about roads, right . Freeway, thruway. 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 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 emergencies, right . 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. 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. Right . 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 you are driving back home after a long week at school. Right . Youre commuting back to highway 08 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. In some places particularly in cities, this is highway 94 in st. Paul. Between minneapolisst. Paul down here. Minneapolis is over here. We sink the road so that crosstraffic can conveniently move over. Bridges are no longer archways constructed for anaesthetic experience, but, rather, to be as convenient as possible. Right . And so we have a very different change in our roadway design. How many of us think about driving a car as a Recreational Activity anymore . We dont. 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. Driving is no longer a gee whiz activity. You know, for me as i teach you the Landscape Architect teaching, some people who will be pricing 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 with the aesthetic experienceal concern. I think this is a loss. Many people spend hours and hours of their lives on freeways and commuting. We can sort of think about that bubble in the car that were sitting in. 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 possibility 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 is if we took a tiny little bit more maybe its not 31. Safety economy, utility, and beauty. What if we start to think about changing these environments. They, too, could be productive and green. What if they generated solar energy . What if they became places for prairies which have habitat . We can turn it into something more productive for the environment and more beneficial to the human beings who move through them. I say looking back to the hay day of the parkway is one way to think about that. You just got five minutes of your life back. [ applause ] this Labor Day Weekend American History tv on cspan 3 has three days of featured programming. Saturday night at 8 00 eastern Bakersfield College professor oliver rose alesshares his personal Family History and other oral histories about the farm workers association. Chavez was actually blowing this up. The movement of farm workers, the people at the bottom of society, right, were suddenly becoming engaged in fighting for their rights, wages, working conditions, but also mobilizing for politicians, right . Well talk maybe a little bit about this later, and i know some of you mentioned this. One of the best friends of the chavez family is the kennedy family, right . Starting with john and then robert and their children. Sunday evening at 6 00 on american artifacts well visit the National Security archive at George Washington university with its director thomas blatan for the anniversary of the freedom of information act signed into law by president johnson. A lonely crusader, all of a sudden he picked up this bright young illinois congressman as a cosponsor. A guy named donald rumsfeld. His statement on the floor of the house in 1966 is a pretty good explanation of why the bill then became a real majority bill. Rumsfeld said government has gotten so big, its involved in so many different pieces of our lives and our commercial life, industrial lives, medicare, social security, so forth, we need the right to get those records out of agencies. We were fortunate that we were able to really tailor our specific needs for all kinds of things for the Museum Objects for telling the interpretation, and for the physical fixes and construction that needed happen. Not just to the buildings, but to the historic grounds and gardens and we were able to present that to mr. Rubenstein, and he donated 12. 3 million to make that half. For a complete tv schedule, go to southwest thcspan. Org. We visit the Tattered Cover bookstore. Its considered the cornerstone of the literary culture of denver. If you look at the Tattered Cover, youll see in the store green carpets, and sometimes grass fixtures and the doork wood. The original barnes noble superstores were model odd this. Then author Juan Thompson talks about living with his father gonzo journalist hunter s. Thompson and his book stories i tell myself. You know, he was born in 1936, so when he is growing up, she didnt grow up in an era when fathers were, you know, typically heavily involved with raising the kids. That was part of it. Second writing was always that was the most important thing. Family was secondary for sure. Also this weekend as part of our cspan cities tour, some history of denver, colorado, on American History tv. Cindy, National Fish and Wildlife Service ranger for the rocky Flats Nuclear sites transition into a National Wildlife refuge. So we do have elk that uses this area. They use the drainages for camping. We also have mill deer, so there may be some mill deer off and ones out here. Coyotes are other common mammals. Occasionally theres a bear in this area. Then kimberly field, author of the book the denver mint, 100 years of gangsters, gold, and goats. Talks about how the mibt changed the city. By the 180s denver itself had gotten rich from mining, and it wanted to become the queen city of the plains, the center of commerce, the leader in the western United States. And the city fathers at that point decided that a mint they could be proud of was going to be part of that process. The cspan cities tour of denver, colorado, saturday at noon eastern on cspan 2s book tv and sunday afternoon at 2 00 on American History tv on cspan 3. Working with our cable affiliates and visiting cities across the country. Lectures and history peter norton is a history of Technology Professor at the university of virginia in charlesville. In this class he looks at what is called americas love affair with the automobile. Exploring the impact of cars on American Cities and the second half of the 20th century. This includes the destruction of neighborhoods for new highways and a significant change in the character and structural density of downtowns to accommodate parking decks and surface slots. This class is an hour and ten minutes. I would like to start actually with the question, and i want a clearance from thank you all about which one of these things is best. Think about it a second. Which one. Weve got a paper clip, a binder clip, and stapler. Which one is best. Osha, says which one is best . Its not that hard. Which one is best
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