Automobiles. How innovations made for those were used in development of americas freeways. She highlights the work of the firm and described how many parkways were imagined as aesthetic subpoenases, not just roads between places. Her class is about an hour and 10 minutes. Professor hohmann ok, gang, today we are looking at the development of roads in the world of landscape and architect and land development. You guys probably know that you dont know a lot of Landscape Architects who do roads. Its not something we associate with Landscape Architect to you. It wasnt always so, in fact, the modern free away that you guys drive every day has its roots in Landscape Architecture and the park planning that we have been talking about this semester. Im going to start with a little bit of review and this familiar landscape which everyone should, i hope recognize which is of course Prospect Park. So we look at the development of central park and Prospect Park, the next great park in the late 1860s. They design roads associated with this park and these were intended to be broad treelined streets spinning off the edges of the park in here. Theyre originally supposed to be four. Two were actually built, eastern and Ocean Parkway. Here is a view of Ocean Parkway from 1894. So if we think about this which is one of the first references to parkways in the United States, they based their idea off of falk avenue in paris, so if youre thinking about the work that we talked about earlier. In this early conception of the parkway. Theyre thinking about a couple of rather simply ideas. First its a wider than average street. Ts wider. Second parkways were usually tree lined. Were talking about boulevards. 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. So in your text the parkway provides the psychological carryover of the restful influence of one park area into its echo in another with little or no interruption along the way. O there is this idea of park seamlessly with the parkway. Parkways began to be a little more serious with the design of his system which is, anyone . Yeah, the buffalo park system. It was designed in 1871. And 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. Essentially there are kind of these Straight Lines grade following boulevard system. The parkway as part of a park system spreads across the United States seen here in chicago, west park system, the designer and kansas city park system. Again there are gridded environments, wide streets, treelined connecting park to park. And 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, so we just looked at that system and we could see it extending to connect the Riverfront Park designed by kessler down to small park, the large country park which becomes developed later on in the development of kansas city. So early parkways, the aspect here are that they are intraurban within the city. They are used to structure the inside of the city, continuing park to park, downtown to park, residences to park and having the maximum distance of 10 to 12 miles. Other well known parks and parkway systems, buffalo, chicago, minneapolis, louisville, denver, seattle, essex county, all over the county, people begin building these park systems and using parkways as a way to connect and just looking at some of the designers, the film featuring greatly, kessler, cleveland in minneapolis and jensen and others in chicago. As parkways develop, Landscape Architects classify them into two types, the ones that we are looking at from the formal parkways and another type they begin to call informal parkways. It basically means they curve 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. Right 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. We talked about this a little bit before when we were talking about park system, but the parkway begins to be thought about as a kind of separate entity when they begin to lassify them as informal parkways. John charles who we have talked as the stepson of frederick sr. Becomes a member of the firm in the late 1880s. He writes an important article in 191. Ys and he characterizes parkways at this time. Its 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 described the informal parka as being soupior for a number of reasons summarized here. Would t is that it urve irlinear as talked about, topographical differences and other Natural Futures and property boundaries which might not be completely straight as well. Because they were laid out to fit to the topography, they could be graded more easily than straight alignment. This would cut down on their development costs. They also did less damage to the adjacent landscape. They didnt have to grade so much around the road bed. He advocates for informal parkways as the prefostered for City Development and for planning for future City Development in part because you have a parkway curving through a residential district, that area could then become the park for the surrounding residences. To make this particularly effective, he says that it is worth purchasing or taking the and having that land under the commission. The other aspect of the article that is worth looking at is he says that parkways are not just park but they are also transportation corridors. As we have talked about, we had caring ways industrial paths, ridele paths in terms of being part of parks and part of parkways in this absolutely gigantic crosssection drawing. I like it because it kind of shows a hypothetical section of its 400 feet wide. Your average two lane road today is 45 feet wide. This is 10 times the width. We have seen this. He says that you can begin to in this crosssection of the parkway, we can begin thinking about putting in different uses. So under here, he says we can have rapid transit, electric rail. We have different modes of transit, we would call this parkway. Ultimodall different areas are by trees, grass, lawn, and even park, ok. So trolleys in the 1900s are one of the preferred forms of public transportation. I also love this drawing because right in here he has got automobile drive. So 1913 already, wow, we can put cars on parkways, too. He is thinking forward. This is the thing that begins to move Landscape Architect 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. Is this is a great example of an informal parka. Using it as both a parkway and a transit corridor. Around 1887 when the system was initially being designed, the roads connecting the parks within the necklace included different sections. There was the arborway connecting, jamaica pond, Franklin Park connected by another section and the river jamaica tarying to ond as well. In greater detail in a second. I want you to kind of of notice that the parkway system is laid out, not along the grids of boston, not that boston has a lot of grids, its an old city. Its laid out along the corridor of the muddy river year. Other scabbing sick of it is widened, some are skinnier to make their way into residential areas. Is my other scabbing characteristic here, it follows the natural ter rain of the land terrain of the land, the late 1920s and 1930s called parkways and land values, you can see the characteristic of that cost section. Its a beautiful leafy steven were, bunches of trees. Pedestrian way or bridal path through here as well. This beautiful leafy environment that serves for a park to and for take a stroll. If we look at this line, this is again the same section, jamaica pound is over here. Here is the arbor wait and jamaica way, the other section. I have three lines showing parkway. With the red line matches the blue line, matches the green line. We can see how the porch way he will pants and contracts to meet its surrounding. In some places its narrower, wider, and we have different roadway elements, roadway, bridal path, walk and the park on the side of the road. Bit rider. A little front ago road if i live on the residential side to allow me to roadway. That main the key aspects. T has access and the early parkway system, i have direct access, i have the right to that on the roadway. That is a significant park of americas system in the late 19 gged and 20th century. This will change as we move to he modern washing way. So here is a diagram showing that. We have streets, we have access from the streets on to the main road and then individual residents with the blue arrows can access that road away as well. Its an integrated system. Residential areas are parks and roadway all kind of selected its a happy kind of environment. The modern parkway, the bronx River Parkway. D like the parkways of the emrals neckly in boston which was created as a sanitary improvement. Westchester county, new york, a landscape scene, but much of the bronx River Parkway initially looked like this, ok. Have look closely ear, we peoples laundry and right now that image is an out house. F you think of police, we have sanitary waste pretty much flowing down into the bronx river down here. In 19 70, the bronx river mark way compression, independent agency of the city. S authorized to survey the acquire, design and construct a refer. Along the suers, road, park, all combined into one. And the property was acquired by 1909. They had some political and inancial problems and they egan construction in 1916, world series, wham what i do i want to happen. The parkway was designed by a team of designers and in addition to the landscape was jay downer, the engineer and thriving ombined both and the presentation of landscape and fews future. Road ng the planting, the alignment and float design. The engineer worked on the technical aspects and a series of bridges across the parkway. N addition, along the driveway , they inserted a series of parks in a roadway on ear sad. There is a 40 foot drive lane in the rightofway. It looks sort of what we have been talking about all it r, what makes bo modern . This makes it modern, the automobile. Y 1919 cars are becoming increasingly popular and the United States. Although the world was designed as a parkway, in contrast to its spread sores wasnt diagnose specifically for speed of 25 to 35 miles an hour. So what makes it modern is this. He idea of combining cars with landscape design. We combine the features of traditional 19th century rkways with five innovations for accommodating faster moving traffic. Its the car that begins to transform the parkway from a scener device, a park decrease a practice constitute decrease. 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. A lot of you have graded roads in your class and done a little. Ath on we get moving faster, sharp turns become problematic when you are driving faster and faster. Were designing a road for faster speeds, the cutter begins to be longer. Serial s in the you want to get what that is . I railroad, exactly. Here is the bronx River Parkway. So we can see to accommodate cars moving and 20 to 30 piles an hour, the blood curves connected to broad spiral curves, right. It creates a line through the landscape. Hats change number one. Number two, we get a wider and wider rightofway. This is a Landscape Development plan for the roadway. We can start to see two things about the rightofway. First of all, its not consistent. Its not just a consistent narrow strip running through but it opens up to provide park experiences. And the road bed gets wider and wider. It gets up to the 400 feet width talked about in an article. In addition, number three, i like this sort of image because here we can see the local roads, one of the local roads owner it and youll see there is no access on to the main parkway. To accommodate faster moving traffic, we eliminate that access point, why, small children will run out in front of the cars and get crushed. Specific points are designed where you can get on the roadway and in fact to do this makes this particularly useful, we start to say that were going to allow local traffic to travel over the roadway. The parkway with its beautiful curving line moves through the landscape and we maybe perhaps mound up a little soil and allow brings with local traffic to move over that and at specific places, design, but we all know today as a three away interchange. Here is road moving over. Here are our budding owners. They have no right of access. They 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 design of roadways. And the bring, where does the bridge come from, where have we seen it before, anyone . Central park, exactly, right. The Great Crossing elimination structure. Voila, the birth of the limited access roadway through the creation of these particular bridges. Funny, interesting thing 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 a beautiful tableau in this park, a stone bridge, a bridal path there. Look at the details, look at that, delightful light posts 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 were in a beauty colic past really landscape. Things do not look particularly ecould logically driven, do they. As a matter of 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, ok. So the gas station has trellises, doesnt exactly look like your 7eleven today, does it . Its kind of cute. And there is this idea of camouflaging almost the modern technology of the automobile with this nostalgic view of the park, parka or country side. This is one of the weird barts about early roadway design is technologically its quite advanced, ok. Its moving at speed. Its hard for us to think about this as something its fighting 25 miles an hour. I invite you to back when you were first driving a car. Youre driving along and its going 25 miles an hour, you think youre going to drive into something and its kind of scary. This arriving at 25 miles an hour was a new sensation, something we dont think of today. Perhaps this nostalgic stone clad bridged environment tempered that feeling of technology somewhat. Huge success. Embraced with a great passion and we can see a postcard view. Which is the last time that someone sent you a postcard of a road. Aunty d a postcard, dear may, i drove along the parkway today. Not something we would normally do. 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 free for all. We have traffic 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 the scenic landscape boulevard for recreation. The only thing people decide is wow, i can actually use this to get places. Some people say i can be on a bumpy old dirt road somewhere or on the modern parkway with a concrete or asphalt surface and be flying along here. People are recognizing that these are convenient. Learn the parkways just as we see you with the development of parks, people want to live next to the parka. You have access to access to parks and transportation. It spurs residential construction. The parkway was built, houses began to build up and people began to realize that they can use these roads for commuting. Social ndscape is a nd economic success. More parkas 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 branch River Parkway. Its down in here. Westchester county takes the idea of parkways and runs with them and creates a whole series of parkways. All manage by the Westchester County park commission. This is a little bit different from the way we view roads today which are usually managed by Highway Commissions, county engineers, right, or the department of transportation, mindot, idot, managers are managing parkways. Aesthetics are really important that nature of these landscapes back increasingly important. If we look at a series of crosssections of the Westchester County park system, we can see hutchinson, saw mill, 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. Were hopping on the parkways. Were driving to parks, were 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 nydot, but ny state park system. So the state parks with robert moses, who is a rather famous builder, developer, in new york, designs in his early years of work the new york long island parkway system. And 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 and state park lecture about jones beach state park. Places like this which were 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. Still 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. A couple of things we are beginning to see here in terms of design. We are beginning to start to think about not just one highway arch but two for traffic in two directions. Were starting to expand the ideas ideas. And here again, that delightful freeforall in terms of striping. That will start to see some modifications here in a minute. I like to call the 1930s the heyday of the american parkway. The american modern parkway. And there is a couple of 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 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 talk about the planting design, the view sheds, the way you would experience this roadway. Architects would provide the bridges and structures in an artistic sensibility. Unlike early parkway systems, they are large and theyre actually beginning to think about regions instead of being intraurban, they begin to be interurban. They begin to connect different places, connect cities. And the third thing is they begin to function as planning tools. 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. 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 merritt parkway in connecticut, thatbaltimore parkway between baltimore and washington, d. C. In the midatlantic region. Were going to look at the merit parkway and the taconic parkway. Number one, merritt 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 merritt parkway. One of the hills coming down. You can see some of its innovations which included curbs along the roadside to facility facilitate drainage. You can see sort of that it is 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, to prevent people from driving over in to 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 no longer being designed by park commissions, but now there is a Highway Commission involved. Thayer chase was the architect for the right of way. And Leslie Sumner was the structural engineer. A couple of differences. 38 miles. We can see parkways getting longer. They are 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 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. 8 , thats about the slope of a handicapped ramp. It is not like they are completely deadlevel either. Another view of the merritt. 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 in fact that the right of way was consistent throughout its length without widenings for recreational areas. 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. 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. 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. The merritt parkway is still used. The other aspect is the divided roadway. The divided roadway was two 26foot wide concrete lanes, separated by a median that ranged from relatively narrow to 22 feet wide. 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 of that reflecting paint that we all now have an the side of our roads today. As you can see here, lots of plantings in the middle of the roadway. At the time, critics described the planting design as lavish and sensitive in the 1950s when it reached maturity. The road today is still known for its plantings of flowering dogwood and its kind of logo is a little flowering dogwood blossom for the merritt parkway. It is known for its unique plantings. Finally, the bridges on the merritt parkway were extremely carefully designed. Not one of them is the same. Each one has a different architectural character to it. You can start to see each one had a distinct architectural flair. 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 one of the bridges in the center. Another one is a metal bridge with spider webs on the metal work. There are these beautiful, beautiful kind of landmarks as you drive down road. So this is very much an aesthetic experience. Right . So youd be surrounded by flowering dogwood trees, looking at angel wings which are going to take you to heaven after you crashed. These were meant to be kind of beautiful experiences. Just fun facts 68 bridges along the parkway, each one completely unique. Detailed in a variety of styles. Moderne, art deco, art nouveau, 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, Westchester County parkway system and it connected new york city with the capital of new york, albany. It runs up the east side of new york. And it is about 80 miles in length, and it was begun in the 1930s. However, world war ii intervened. It is not completed until the 1950s. Id like to talk about the taconic parkway as an example of the intraurban parkway because it does a couple of things. First, it connects to the parkway system. Second, it begins to pioneer new changes to parkway design to make them faster, safer, more convenient. And third, it brings us toward the post war era. The taconic parkway crosses through parts of the mountainous east coast, if you will, of new york. Through the catskill mountains. 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. 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 it is 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 in 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. 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 new drainage system for this roadway as well. You can see catch basins and culverts. I love the culverts. Were still in camouflage mode. No ones actually going to see this because it is on the roadside. So it is the outfall from the water flows in to here, and it flows out, but were still cladding it in beautiful stone masonry. 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. 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 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. The wider these are, reduces headlight glare. Headlights are not shining into your eye which was more of a problem when the roads are 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 to geometry . Okay. Everybody, were going to go into math world here for a moment. After the 1930s, parkways like the taconic parkway begin to experience these changes that we talked about. Faster speeds, widening ride of ways, longer distances and flattened curves. The other things that they change are the geometries of road design. Ive got two diagrams here. This is from christopher tunnard, mad main america, chaos or control, a great book published in the 60s or 70s about changing aesthetics in american environments. They have a great section on highway design. So if youve 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. We talk about you put a Straight Line down. Here weve got a river. These are indicating topography. Create Straight Lines about where you want your road to go, then you connection them with arcs. That circular arc. There is a point of tangency where the curve meets the tangent. Right . So that was how parkways were laid out prior to the 1930s. Just like roads. Right . 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 tangency creates a little bit of difficulty in driving. So a new idea is 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 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. 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 you are 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. Try the intersection down highway 30 this is my favorite place to experience this highway 30 and interstate 35. You are 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 changes. So we begin to pioneer new geometry to change to accommodate the vehicle and accommodate new speeds. Just stop for a moment and kind of think about this. Weve talked about the development of new typologies, of landscape typologies, and we go from the country park with capability ground to the public park. We go from the parkway connecting Prospect Park to another park in brooklyn, to a parkway designed 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 taconic the taconic 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 taconic parkway was to connect the commercial stronghold of new york city to the capital, albany. So people could have this convenient transportation, particularly in the 1930s, prior to common air traffic. So urban and regional parkways increasingly become used for commuting traffic. And, initially they are intrastate. Theyre usually done by a state Highway Commission. Not a Parkway Commission but a state Highway Commission. Other ones we talked about baltimore, washington, if anyones been in new jersey, 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. Whats lilac way is now one of the major commuting routes in the twin cities. 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. That talks about ccc construction. Wpa, cwa, depressionary construction of highway 100. 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. They are quite different because they were almost exclusively built for recreational and scenic preservation and focus. 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 a 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. And when automobiles become increasingly important, they hop on the bandwagon and begin to design roads which are, in some cases, interstates, but in it the extreme cases, begin to link different states. And speeds are slower on nps parkways because you are touring. You are not getting somewhere. You are 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. And they focus on scenic preservation and in some cases cultural preservation. A few key examples. One of the earliest was mt. Vernon memorial parkway. I dont believe this was initially built by the National Park service, though it is now managed by the National Park service. But again, it was a parkway, a scenic and culture preservation parkway meant to take visitors from washington, d. C. To hartfords president s home. A couple of other ones which i would put in to 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 coast of the entire mississippi from minnesota to the gulf of mexico, 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, pocahontas. 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. And to get people between these two Historic Sites, they decided to create a parkway. You can see the right of waylaid 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 it encompassed both scenic and Historic Preservation and new ideas about road technologies. Nps designers were kind of at the forefront. On the one hand, the access bridges, the Great Crossing elimination structures were designed using colonial brick. They actually created a series of brickyards in virginia. This is during the 1930s where they would create brick in the traditional colonial process. Each brick was handmade so not machine manufactured with that kind of hand craftsmanship we talked about in terms of rustic design, so as you would drive down the parkway, you would see these colonial style, though nobody built a colonial style bridge like that for an automobile in the 1700s, but we have that sort of material characteristic. The road bed was designed in concrete, and exposed aggregate, so it has a kind of pebbled texture and a yellow color to kind of mimic historic road perhaps, historic railroad. Gravel road. Though 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. The here is a view of one of those bridges. We can see this kind of streamlined modern farms, we forms, we talked last week 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 sort of think about those two designs being similar perhaps