So if we think about this, which is the first one of the first references to parkways in the United States. Olmstead and vox based their idea off paris. In this early conception of the parkway, they are thinking about a couple of rather simple ideas. First it is a wider than average street. Second, parkways in the early conception were usually treelined. Weve talked a little bit about boulevards and essentially a parkway in the beginning was a wide street with trees indistinguishable from the term boulevard. They are pretty much identical. The most significant difference is the name, which provided a sense of the utility of the parkway as linking a park to park. Norman newton in your text says the parkway provides the psychological carryover of the restful influence of one large park area into its echo in another with little or no interruption along the way. Right . So there is this idea of park. It is connected seamlessly with a parkway. Parkways became to be a little bit more serious with the design of this system which is anyone . The buffalo park system. Designed by olmstead in 1871. We can see on these images the parkways connecting the pieces of the park system, front, the parade and delaware park. As we talked about earlier, these early parkways were usually aligned with existing city grid forms. There is some ornamentation here in this part of the plan. But essentially they are these kind of Straight Line grid following boulevard systems. And the parkway as part of a park system spreads across the United States, seen here in chicago west park system. Reminder, jens jenson, the architect. There are gridded environments, wide streets, tree lines connecting park to park. These early park systems, as they develop over time, begin to expand and get larger and larger. The red box on here is the previous slide. We just looked at that system. We can see it extending to connect the Riverfront Park designed by kessler down to swope park, the large country park that becomes developed later on in the development of kansas city. Early parkways, key aspect here is that they are intraurban within the city. They are used to structure the inside of the city connecting park to park, downtown to park, residences to park, and early parkways having a maximum distance of about 1020 miles. Other wellknown park and parkway systems, we talk about buffalo, chicago, minneapolis, louisville, denver, seattle, essex county. All over the country people begin building these park systems and using parkways as a way to connect them. Just looking at some of the designers, of course, the olmstead firm featuring greatly kessler, Horace Cleveland in minneapolis and jenson, among others, in chicago. Landscape architecture classifies them as formal parkways, and another type which they begin to call informal parkways. What does informal mean . It basically means that they are curb linear and no longer follow the grid. The minneapolis parkway system, if you look at this plan, we have the formal system here with memorial drive. This was actually developed later as a formal parkway. A large boulevard. But here we can see the informal parkway rolling along the lakes in minneapolis. Instead of being aligned with the grid system, the informal parkways were aligned with natural features. Now we talked about this a little bit before when we were talking about park systems. But the parkway begins to be thought about as a kind of separate entity when they begin to classify them as informal parkways. John charles olmstead, whom we have talk about previously as the stepson of Frederick Law Olmsted sr. , becomes a member of the firm in the late 1880s, writes an important article on parkways called classes of parkways in Landscape Architecture magazine in 1913. He characterizes parkways at this time. It is an interesting article because its going to classify things in a way that people start to think about parkways differently. He describes them as formal and informal. And describes the informal parkway as being superior for a number of reasons summarized here. The first is that it was curval linear, aligned with natural features and adjusted to move along river channels, top topigraphical differences and boundary differences which may not be straight as well. Because they were laid out to fit the topography, they would be graded more easily than straight alignments. This would cut down on their development costs. They also did less damage to the adjacent landscape so they didnt have to grade so much around the road bed. He advocates for informal parkways as the preferred form for City Development and for planning future City Development, in part because when you had a parkway curving through a residential district. That area could then become the park for the surrounding residences. And to make this particularly effective, he says that it is worth purchasing or taking the land. And having that land under the Park Commission. The other aspect of the article that is worth looking at is he says that parkways are not just parks but they are also transportation corridors. As we talked about, weve had carriageways, pedestrian paths and bridle paths in terms of those being parts of parks. Theyve also become part of parkways as seen here in this absolutely gigantic Cross Sectional drawing. I like this Cross Sectional drawing because it kind of shows a hypothetical section of a Rapid Transit parkway or boulevard, and its literally 400 feet wide. So your average road, twolane road today is about 40 feet wide. This is 10 times the width to he says that you can begin to in this Cross Section of the parkway, we can begin to think about putting in different uses. So under here, he says we can have Rapid Transit, electric rail. Weve got tree strip so different loads of transit. We could call this today a multimodal parkway. These different areas would be divided by green trees, grass, lawn and even park. Trolleys in the 1900s are one of the preferred forms of public transportation. But i also love this drawing because right in here hes got automobile drive. So in 1913 already, John Charles Olmstead is saying, wow, we can put cars on parkways, too. So hes thinking forward. This is the thing that begins to move Landscape Architects out of the park business and into the roadway business. So lets take a closer look at one of these crosssections, again looking at a park system that you are perhaps familiar with. The emerald necklace in boston. This is a great example of an informal parkway being used as both a parkway and a transit corridor. Around 1887 when this system was initially being designed, the roads connecting the parks within the necklace included different sections. There was the arborway connecting the Arnold Arboretum to jamaica pine. Franklin park connected by another section. The riverway connecting the back bay fans to jamaica pond as well. Were going to zoom in on this section and look at that crosssection in greater detail in a second. But from this plan, i like to kind of notice that the parkway system is laid out not along the grids of boston not that boston has a lot of grids. It is an old city. But it is laid out along the corridor of the muddy river here. So it has a curvilinear path. Another characteristic is that its widened. So there is places where it actually widens out to encompass park uses. Then there is places where it gets skinner in to skinny its way in between residential areas. Whats my other characteristic here . It follows the natural terrain of the landscape. Here it is in a photograph view. This is probably from the late 1920s, early 1930s, from a book by Henry Vincent hubbard called parkways and land values which well get to in a moment. You can see the characteristic of across the asian of that crosssection. This is a beautiful, leafy scene here. Weve got lots of trees. Main carriageway. Frontage road over here. Pedestrianway or bridle path through here as well. So this kind of beautiful leafy environment that serves for both transit and for park. You can take a little stroll. If we look at this line, this is again that same section, jamaica pond is over here and here is the arborway and jamaica way to the other section. Ive got three lines here showing different Cross Sections of the parkway. We can see those here. So the red line matches the blue line, matches the green line. We can actually see how the parkway expands and contracts to meet its surroundings. So in some places it is wider. In someplace it is narrower. And we have different elements, including roadway, bridle path, walk, and the park on the side of the road. Here it is a little bit wider. So main roadway. Frontage road allowing, if i live over on the residential sides, to allow me to get on to that main roadway. So thats one of the key aspects of the boston parkway system is that it has access. In the early parkway systems, they probably live on the side of this i have direct access. I have the rights of light, air and Public Access to the roadway. That is a significant part of american parkway park systems in the late 19th and early 20th century. This will change, however, as we move to the modern parkway. So, heres a diagram showing that. So weve got streets. Weve got access from the street on to the main road. And then individual residents shown with the blue arrows can actually access that roadway as well. It is this kind of integrated system where residential areas, parks and roadway are all kind of connected in this happy kind of environment. The first modern parkway is generally considered to be this one. The bronx River Parkway. Like the parkways of the emerald necklace in boston, which were initially created as a sanitary improvement, the bronx River Parkway was an effort to conserve the polluted bronx river in Westchester County, new york. And this is a sort of scene, a nice sylvan landscape scene. But much of the bronx River Parkway initially looked like this. If we look closely here, we got peoples laundry back here, and right there, that images and outhouse. Right . So if you think about pollution, we actually have sanitary waste pretty much probably flowing down in to the bronx river down here. So in 1907, the bronx River Parkway commission, sort of like a Park Commission but a Parkway Commission, an independent agency of the city, was authorized to survey, acquire, design and construct a 16mile linear parkway along the river. Like the muddy river in boston, it was going to be a lets clean up the river project. Pollution control, sanitary, sewers, roads, park, all combined into one, and the property was acquired by 1909. They had some political and financial problems and they begin construction in 1916. Then in 1916, wham, world war i happens. So it is delayed until 1919 is when they begin to construct it. The parkway was designed by a team of designers. And in addition to the Landscape Architects, Herman Merkel and gilmore clark, was j. Downer, the engineer. The park combined both driving and the preservation of landscape and scenic features. Merkel and gilmore clark, the l. A. S, did the planting, road alignment and slope design, while jay downer, the engineer, worked on the technical aspects and a series of bridges across the parkway. In addition, along the driveway, they inserted a series of parks in the roadway along either side. And other fun facts to know there was a 40foot drive lane associated in the right of way. So looks like what weve talked about all semester in terms of parkway design. What makes it modern . This is what makes it modern. The automobile. By 1919 cars are becoming increasingly popular in the United States, and although the road was designed as a parkway, the bronx River Parkway, in contrast to its predecessors, was designed specifically for automobiles traveling at speeds of 2535 miles an hour. So what makes it modern is this. The idea of combining cars with landscape design. And we combine the features of traditional 19th century parkways with five innovations for accommodating fastermoving automobile traffic. So it is really the car that begins to transform the parkway from a scenic device, a park device, to a transportation device. This evolution is what were going to talk about for the rest of the class today. But were going to start by looking at these four innovations that begin to change the parkway. So. Number one. The first, and perhaps the most important, are the use of long curves. Lot of you guys have graded roads in your grading classes. Youve sort of done the math on this. When we look about a little trail, we can do a lot of kind of really curvywurvy zigs and zags because we are walking really slowly. As we get moving faster, sharp turns problematic when you are driving faster and faster. So as we are designing a road for faster speeds, the curves begin to be longer. You can start to see this in this aerial view of the bronx River Parkway where here is a very nice Straight Line which is anybody want to guess what that is . A railroad. Exactly. And here is the bronx River Parkway. So we can see to accommodate cars moving at 2030 miles an hour we have these broad curves connected to straightline tangent connected to long spiral curves. He creates is beautiful, sinuous line moving through the landscape. Thats change number one. Change number two is as we accommodate a wider road bed, 40feet wide. We get a wider around wider right of way. So this is a Landscape Development plan for the roadway and we can start to see two things about the right of way. First of all, it is not consistent. Its not just a consistent narrow strip running through the terrain, but it actually widens to open up to provide use sheds or actually over here to provide park experiences. And the road bed gets wider and wider. Its up to that 400feet width that John Charles Olmstead was talking about in his article. In addition number three and i like this sort of image because here we can see the local roads one of the local roads around it. You will see there is no access on to the main parkway. To accommodate faster moving traffic, we eliminate that access point. Why . Because small children are going to run out into the cars and get crushed. Right . So there is no access or what we would call limited access. So specific points are designed where you can get on to the roadway. To make this particularly useful, we start to say that were going to allow local traffic to travel over the roadway. The parkway with its beautiful sinuous curving line moves through the landscape, and we may perhaps mound up a little soil and build bridges allowing local traffic to move over that. And at specific places, design what we all know today as a freeway interchange, essentially. Here is road moving over. Here are our abutting owners. They have no right of access so they have got to come out, come down the road, come back, and get on that parkway here. That is a major kind of conceptual change in the design of roadways. And the bridge where does the bridge come from . Where have we seen that bridge before . Anyone . Central park. Exactly. The grade crossing elimination structure. Voila. The birth of the limited access roadway through the creation of these particular bridges. Right . Okay. So many interesting things here as we kind of look at this road is, wow, you kind of feel like youre out in the country. Dont you . This is beautiful like tableau. You are in a park, we have this beautiful rustic stone bridge. A little bridle path. Look at the details. The light full would post light post that can be lit at night. A lovely scene. This is one of the weird parts about parkways. Very modern. The car. The model t running through here. Yet we look like we are in a book call it passed oral bucolic pastoral setting. These do not look particularly technologically driven, do they. And in fact as we look at other features on the roadside. This looks like a nice little dutch college, doesnt it . It is a gas station. So the gas station has trellises. Doesnt exactly look like your 7eleven today. Its kind of cute. There is this idea of camouflaging almost the modern technology of the automobile with this nostalgic view of the park, parkway or countryside. This is one of the weird parts about early roadway design is, technologically it is quite advanced. It is moving at speeds. It is hard for us to think about this as something exciting, moving 25 miles an hour. But i invite you to cast your mind back to when you first started driving a car and youre driving along and it is going 25 miles an hour and you think youre going to drive into something and its kind of scary. This driving at 25 Miles Per Hour was a new sensation. Something that we dont sort of think about today. Perhaps this nostalgic stoneclad bridged environment tempered that feeling of technology somewhat. Huge success. Bronx River Parkway is embraced with a great passion. We can see postcard view. When was the last time someone sent you a postcard of a road . All right . So youre going to send a postcard. Dear auntie mae, i drove along the bronx River Parkway today. Not something we would normally do. Postcard view. Very, very popular. People would go out for the sunday drive. A couple of things to notice. No stripe down the middle of the road. Probably was a big fat freeforall. Right . So weve got traffic going in both directions on here. I think these were probably pretty exciting to drive on. In addition to recreation so we have the idea of the park, people driving along this scenic lands