Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways? While the answer to latter question remains elusive, the former has an interesting history that begins right here in Crown Heights.

Eastern Parkway. The centerpiece of Crown Heights.   This tree lined boulevard that divides north Crown Heights from south – was the first street way of its kind in the United States.   Although it enjoys much acclaim today, ironically, Eastern Parkway started out as part of the failed vision of two preeminent landscape architects.

When they first conceived of Eastern Parkway in 1866, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the architects of Central Park and Prospect Park, envisioned the parkway as part of an intricate expanse of interconnected boulevards that would link Prospect Park to Central Park and other parks in between. Indeed, the name that Olmsted and Vaux coined for the new form of urban landscape, “parkway”, comes from the notion that these street ways would connect various parks and would serve as “linear” parks themselves.

The vision of Olmsted and Vaux is described in captivating detail in The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design Of Multiway Boulevards by Allan B. Jacobs, Elizabeth Macdonald and Yodan Rofé. (<-highly recommended reading for any urban planning and/or history buffs):

“A series of ways designed with the express reference to the pleasure with which they may be used for walking, riding, and the driving of carriages; for rest, recreation, refreshment, and social intercourse . . . so arranged that they will be conveniently accessible from every dwelling house. . . .[providing] access for the purposes of ordinary traffic to all the houses that front upon it, offering a special road for driving and riding without turning commercial vehicles from the right of way, and furnishing ample public walks, with room for seats, and with borders of turf in which trees may grow of the most stately character.”

Completed in 1874 after four years of construction, the parkway extended from Grand Army Plaza to what was then the border of the City of Brooklyn, Ralph Avenue. To encourage residential development worthy of their new innovation – which Olmsted and Vaux regarded as an evolution in the civilization of man – Olmsted advocated for certain land use restrictions along the strip: “‘Nuisance’ uses (defined as ‘manufactory, trade, business, or calling, which may be in any wise dangerous, noxious, or offensive, to the neighboring inhabitants’) were forbidden, as was building structures other than stables and garages in the backyards of houses.” As further explained in The Boulevard Book,

“Olmsted and Vaux envisioned the parkways lined with single-family houses on large lots. The land bordering them was to be divided into ‘a series of lots adapted to be occupied by detached villas each in the midst of a small private garden.’”

Sadly, land and takings disputes thwarted any meaningful development along Eastern Parkway for decades to come. Moreover, the multi-networked parkway system that they conceived of never materialized – at least not in Olmsted and Vaux’s lifetime.

In 1993, more than a century after the Eastern Parkway was completed, a proposal to create a similar network of interconnected open spaces, called the New York City Greenway System emerged.   In a nod to Olmsted and Vaux’s original vision, the Greenway System would be an interconnected network of bicycle and pedestrian pathways eventually “linking 13 parks, two botanical gardens, the New York Aquarium, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Hall of Science, two environmental education centers, four lakes, and numerous ethnic and historic neighborhoods through the five boroughs.” Eastern Parkway in particular is part of the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway.

The parkway has even been the recipient of federal attention.   Eastern Parkway is on the National Register of Historic Places.   More recently, Mayor Bloomberg and then Congressman Major Owens announced that $12 million of federal stimulus money will go toward reconstruction of the parkway between Grand Army Plaza and Washington Avenue.

Residents still reminisce about the Eastern Parkway of yesteryear, before the subway system was built under and development rose around it a time – when the line of vision extended uninterrupted from Brooklyn to New Jersey.  Today, a week before the West Indian Labor Day Parade, we at Nostrand Park just wanted to pay tribute to the place where it all happens.

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