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ABSTRACT
By revisiting its history from 1870 down to the present, this essay examines the role played by the figure of the parkway – both as idea and as object – in the urban development of the New York metropolitan area. It is the ‘Odyssey’ that interests us here: from the emergence of the Brooklyn parkways designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, to the invention as a total project of the first modern parkway along the Bronx river, from the deployment of a system of regional parkways planned by Robert Moses in the 1930s to its obliteration in the face of the prominent development of highways, followed by the first attempts to rehabilitate historic parkways in the 1970s, when the city was going through a major crisis. Today, the renewed interest of designers and historians has made the parkway an important part of the heritage of urban planning, confronted with major projects and operations that mobilize different scales, uses and disciplines, between conflicting urban policies and temporal shifts. By looking back on its past and projecting its future, the inventory of the New York Parkway history provides valuable lessons with regard to the global changes affecting the contemporary city.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Eliot, “The Influence of the Automobile on the Design of Parkroads,” 27.
2 Nolen and Hubbard, Parkways and Land Values, XI–XII.
3 Lepetit, “Le temps des villes,” 11.
4 Olmsted and Vaux, “The PARK-WAY.”
5 Carr, “The parkway in New York City,” 126.
6 Weil, Histoire de New York, 118–21; Maumi, Usonia, 83–4.
7 Fein, “Parks in a Democratic Society,” 26.
8 Olmsted and Vaux, “The PARK-WAY,” 15.
9 Olmsted, “Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns,” 81.
10 Ibid, 92.
11 Ibid, 83.
12 Olmsted and Vaux, “The PARK-WAY,” 26.
13 Landmarks Preservation Commission, “Eastern Parkway,” 1.
14 Olmsted, The East Parkway and Boulevards in the City of Brooklyn, 17.
15 Zaitzevsky Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Park system.
16 Olmsted, “The misfortunes of New York,” 45.
17 “Report to the New York Legislature of the Commission to select and locate public parks in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth wards of the city of New York,” 7–8.
18 Downer, “The Bronx River Parkway,” 91.
19 Gandy, Concrete and Clay, 122.
20 Report of the Bronx Parkway Commission, 31st December 1917, 8.
21 Eliot, 2nd, “The Influence of the Automobile on the Design of Park Roads,” 28, 29, 37.
22 Report of the Bronx River Parkway Commission, 31st December 1925, 77.
23 Annese, “The Impact of Parkways on Development in Westchester County,” 117–21.
24 Gandy, Concrete and clay, 123.
25 The population of the Bronx rose from 89,000 in 1890 to 1.4 million in 1940. Source Sutcliffe, The Metropolis, 328.
26 Regional Plan of New York and its Environs (Adams, Lewis and Orton), Vol II: The Making of the City.
27 Mumford, “Regions – To live in,” 15.
28 Mumford, “The Plan of New York,” 125.
29 Adams, “Regional highways and parkways in relation to regional parks,” 180.
30 Frederick Law Olmsted Junior was Frederick Law Olmsted’s son. In 1897, he set up the firm of Olmsted Brothers with his cousin John Charles Olmsted (1852-1920) who, following the death of his parents, had been adopted by Frederick Law Olmsted.
31 Regional Plan of New York and its Environs (Adams, Lewis and Orton), Vol I: The Graphic Regional Plan, 274–85.
32 Ibid, 210–6.
33 Clarke, “Our highway problem,” 290.
34 Clarke, “Modern Motorways,” 430.
35 Gutfreund, “Rebuilding New York in the Auto age, Robert Moses and his highways,” 86.
36 Letter from Robert Moses to Fiorello La Guardia, 7th December 1937.
37 Quoted in Stern, Gilmartin and Mellins, New York 1930, 700, note 116.
38 Letter from Robert Moses to Reginald M. Cleveland, 11th May 1939.
39 Letter from Robert Moses to the New York Daily Mirror, 3rd December 1938.
40 Nolen and Hubbard, Parkways and Land Values.
41 Letter from Robert Moses to Holden A. Evans, 6th November 1944.
42 Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier.
43 Di Mento and Ellis, Changing Lanes, 91.
44 Gutfreund, “Rebuilding New York in the Auto age, Robert Moses and his highways,” 90–1; Bromley, “Not so simple! Caro, Moses and the impact of the Cross-Bronx Expressway,” 25.
45 Miller, “Expressway Blight”; Berman, “Robert Moses: The expressway world”; Gray, McCullough, Obenhaus, “The world that Moses built.”
46 Mumford, “The Highway and the City”; Jacobs, Death and life of Great American Cities; Di Mento and Ellis, Changing Lanes, 157–60.
47 Regional Plan Association, The Second Regional Plan, A draft for discussion, 82.
48 Caro, The Power Broker, 256.
49 Abbott, “Parks and Parkways, a Creative Field when the Task is to Avoid Creation,” 22–4.
50 Wells, “The Parkway Influence on Highway Design.”
51 Bugge and Snow, “The Complete Highway.”
52 Clarke, “The Idea of the Parkway,” 38, 46.
53 Tunnard and Pushkarev, Manmade America, 209.
54 Appleyard, Lynch, and Myer, The View from the road.
55 Gandy, Concrete and Clay, 52–9.
56 See Bromley, “Not so Simple!.” Ray Bromley's analysis of nearly 60 pages of Caro's book devoted to the role of Robert Moses in the Cross-Bronx Expressway project showed this excessive propensity to designate Moses as “guilty” when the contexts and reasons were much more complex and multiple.
57 Fein, Landscape into Cityscape, Frederick Law Olmsted’s Plans for a Greater New York City; Fein, “The Olmsted Renaissance, a Search for National Purpose.”
58 Jordy, “Going back to the Father Figure.”
59 Huxtable, “The Tower, the House and the Park.”
60 Johnston, “Olmsted will be Honored Around Country.”
61 Wiseman, “The Playground Pioneer”; Smithson, “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape.”
62 Goldberger, “Landscape as Design: Two Shows Focus on Olmsted.” Landmarks Preservation Commission, “Ocean Parkway, Borough of Brooklyn,” “Eastern Parkway, Borough of Brooklyn.”
63 Laurence, “Olmsted Landscape Pales the Actual Landscape”; Rogers, “The Bronx Parks System, A Faded Design”; Cranz, The politics of Park design; Zapatka, “The American Parkway, Origin and Evolution of the Parkroad; Krieger and MacKin, “Il sistema dei parchi di Boston.”
64 Forgey, “Parkway Design, a Lost Art?,” 47; Leccese, “Roadways Recovered,” 49, 50, 51, 55.
65 Samuels and Carsky, cited in Melvin, “Bronx River Parkway: Acting to Save a Dream.”
66 Regional Plan Association, A Region at Risk.
67 Lopate, “Rethinking Robert Moses,” 42, 44, 46, 48, 50; Ballon and Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City; Tonnelat, “Robert Moses (1888-1981).”
68 Gissen, “Infrastructure Preservation.”
69 “[The label initiative as a scenic byway] intended to encourage local communities to protect road corridors of outstanding scenic, natural, recreational, cultural or historic significance”, Source: State Department of Transportation. Morrone, “The most beautiful thing in the world.”
70 Dal Co, “Landscape Architecture,” 98.
71 Smithson, “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape,” 119.
72 Barlow Rogers, Alex, Frederick Law Olmsted’s New York, 167.
73 Wiseman, “The Playground Pionneer,”105–6.
74 Lopate, “Rethinking Robert Moses,” 48.
75 Ibid, 42.
76 Mac Laughlin, “The Environment: Olmsted’s Odyssey.”
77 Smithson, “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape,” 119.
78 Davis, “The Bronx River Parkway and Photography as an Instrument of Landscape Reform.”
79 Berman, 299.
80 De Meulder, Shannon, “Traditions of Landscape Urbanism,” 70; Palmboom, “Landscape urbanism, conflation or coalition?”; see also Hough, “Frederick Law Olmsted is holding us back (There I said it),” 136–40.
81 Moses, “Plan and Performance.”
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Nathalie Roseau
Nathalie Roseau is Professor of Urbanism at École des Ponts ParisTech and Director of Laboratory Technics, Territories and Societies (CNRS, École des Ponts ParisTech, Université Gustave Eiffel)