's
Eastern Parkway in
New York City, the world's first parkway, according to the
New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. in
Maryland Scenic roads The first parkways in the
United States were developed during the late 19th century by landscape architects
Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux as roads that separated pedestrians, bicyclists, equestrians, and
horse carriages, such as
Eastern Parkway, which is credited as the world's first parkway, and
Ocean Parkway in the
New York City borough of
Brooklyn. The term "parkway" to define this type of road was coined by
Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted in their proposal to link city and suburban parks with "pleasure roads". in
Monmouth County,
New Jersey, in the
New York Metropolitan Area,
United States. This is one of the world's busiest roadways.In
Buffalo, New York, Olmsted and Vaux used parkways with landscaped medians and setbacks to create the first interconnected park and parkway system in the United States.
Bidwell Parkway and Chapin Parkway are 200 foot wide city streets with only one lane for cars in each direction and broad landscaped medians that provide a pleasant, shaded route to the park and serve as mini-parks within the neighborhood. The
Rhode Island Metropolitan Park Commission developed several parkways in the Providence area. Other parkways, such as Park Presidio Boulevard in
San Francisco, California, were designed to serve larger volumes of traffic. During the early 20th century, the meaning of the word was expanded to include
limited-access highways designed for recreational driving of automobiles, with
landscaping. These parkways originally provided
scenic routes without very slow or
commercial vehicles, at
grade intersections, or pedestrian traffic. Examples are the
Merritt Parkway in Connecticut and the
Vanderbilt Motor Parkway in New York. But their success led to more development, expanding a city's boundaries, eventually limiting the parkway's recreational driving use. The
Arroyo Seco Parkway between
Downtown Los Angeles and
Pasadena, California, is an example of lost
pastoral aesthetics. It and others have become major commuting routes, while retaining the name "parkway".
Early high speed roads In New York City, construction on the
Long Island Motor Parkway (Vanderbilt Parkway) began in 1906 and planning for the
Bronx River Parkway in 1907. In the 1920s, the
New York City Metropolitan Area's parkway system grew under the direction of
Robert Moses, the president of the New York State Council of Parks and
Long Island State Park Commission, who used parkways to provide access to newly created state parks, especially for city dwellers. As Commissioner of New York City Parks under Mayor LaGuardia, he extended the parkways to the heart of the city, creating and linking its parks to the greater metropolitan systems. Most of the New York metropolitan parkways were designed by Gilmore Clark. The famed "Gateway to New England"
Merritt Parkway in
Connecticut was designed in the 1930s as a pleasurable alternative for affluent locals to the congested Boston Post Road, running through forest with each bridge designed uniquely to enhance the scenery. Another example is the
Sprain Brook Parkway from lower-
Westchester to connect to the
Taconic State Parkway to
Chatham, New York.
Landscape architect George Kessler designed extensive parkway systems for
Kansas City, Missouri;
Memphis, Tennessee;
Indianapolis; and other cities at the beginning of the 20th century.
New Deal roads on the
Blue Ridge Parkway In the 1930s, as part of the
New Deal, the U.S. federal government constructed
National Parkways designed for recreational driving and to commemorate historic trails and routes. These divided four-lane parkways have lower
speed limits and are maintained by the
National Park Service. An example is the
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built
Blue Ridge Parkway in the
Appalachian Mountains of
North Carolina and
Virginia. Others are
Skyline Drive in
Virginia; the
Natchez Trace Parkway in
Mississippi,
Alabama, and
Tennessee; and the
Colonial Parkway in eastern Virginia's
Historic Triangle area. The
George Washington Memorial Parkway and the
Clara Barton Parkway, running along the
Potomac River near
Washington, D.C., and
Alexandria, Virginia, were also constructed during this era.
Post-war parkways (foreground) and more of
Nassau County, New York, including the
Belt Parkway (left),
Southern State Parkway (right), and
Cross Island Parkway (center rear) In
Kentucky the term "parkway" designates a
freeway in the
Kentucky Parkway system, with nine built in the 1960s and 1970s. They were
toll roads until the
construction bonds were repaid; the last of these roads to charge tolls became
freeways in 2006. The
Arroyo Seco Parkway from
Pasadena to
Los Angeles, built in 1940, was the first segment of the vast
Southern California freeway system. It became part of
State Route 110 and was renamed the Pasadena Freeway. A 2010 restoration of the freeway brought the Arroyo Seco Parkway designation back. . In the
New York metropolitan area, contemporary parkways are predominantly limited-access highways or freeways restricted to non-commercial traffic, excluding
trucks and
tractor-trailers. Some have low overpasses that also exclude buses. The Vanderbilt Parkway, an exception in western
Suffolk County, is a surviving remnant of the
Long Island Motor Parkway that became a
surface street, no longer with controlled-access or non-commercial vehicle restrictions. The
Palisades Interstate Parkway is a post-war parkway that starts at the
George Washington Bridge, heads north through New Jersey, continuing through Rockland and Orange counties in New York. The Palisades Parkway was built to allow for a direct route from New York City to
Harriman State Park. In New Jersey, the
Garden State Parkway, connecting the northern part of the state with the
Jersey Shore, is restricted to buses and non-commercial traffic north of the
Route 18 interchange, but trucks are permitted south of this point. It is one of the busiest toll roads in the country. In the
Pittsburgh region, two of the major Interstates are referred to informally as parkways. The Parkway East (
I-376, formally the
Penn-Lincoln Parkway) connects Downtown Pittsburgh to
Monroeville, Pennsylvania. The Parkway West (
I-376) runs through the
Fort Pitt Tunnel and links Downtown to
Pittsburgh International Airport, southbound
I-79,
Imperial, Pennsylvania, and westbound US 22/US 30. The Parkway North (
I-279) connects Downtown to
Franklin Park, Pennsylvania and northbound
I-79. parkway northbound in
Montgomery Township, Pennsylvania In the suburbs of
Philadelphia,
U.S. Route 202 follows an at-grade parkway alignment known as the "U.S. Route 202 Parkway" between
Montgomeryville and
Doylestown. The parkway varies from two to four lanes in width, has shoulders, a walking path called the
US 202 Parkway Trail on the side, and a speed limit. The parkway opened in 2012 as a bypass of a section of US 202 between the two towns; it had originally been proposed as a four-lane freeway before funding for the road was cut. In
Minneapolis, the
Grand Rounds Scenic Byway system has of streets designated as parkways. These are not freeways; they have a slow speed limit, pedestrian crossings, and stop signs. In
Cincinnati, parkways are major roads which trucks are prohibited from using. Some Cincinnati parkways, such as Columbia Parkway, are high-speed, limited-access roads, while others, such as Central Parkway, are multi-lane urban roads without controlled access. Columbia Parkway carries US-50 traffic from downtown towards east-side suburbs of Mariemont, Anderson, and Milford, and is a limited access road from downtown to the Village of Mariemont. In
Boston, parkways are generally four to six lanes wide but are not usually controlled-access. They are highly trafficked in most cases, transporting people between neighborhoods quicker than a typical city street. Many of them serve as principal arterials and some (like
Storrow Drive,
Memorial Drive, the
Alewife Brook Parkway and the
VFW Parkway) have evolved into regional commuter routes. ==Canada==