The parkway system of
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...
, also known as the Olmsted Park System, was designed by the firm of preeminent 19th century landscape architect
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the USA. Olmsted was famous for co ...
. The system was built from the early 1890s through the 1930s, and initially owned by a state-level parks commission, which passed control to the city of Louisville in 1942.
The system was intended to form a circuit around what was then the fringes of the city of Louisville. However, there is a disconnect of several blocks between Eastern and Southern Parkways, because of a planned parkway running from the terminus of Western (today's Northwestern) Parkway along the
Ohio River and around to Eastern Parkway was never built.
Today, the system falls under direct management of the Louisville Olmsted Parks Conservancy, and under broader supervision by Louisville's Metro Parks Department
Development
The system was first proposed in 1887 by businessman Andrew Cowan, an enthusiastic early supporter of
Louisville's park system. He proposed a series of parkways that would cross every turnpike near the city as the parkways connected the three proposed
parks at the eastern, western and southern fringes of the city. Although Cowan proposed a slow and deliberate development, Mayor
Charles Donald Jacob
Charles Donald Jacob (June 1, 1838 – December 25, 1898) was an American politician who served four terms as mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, two consecutively in 1873-78, then later in 1882-84 and 1888-90. He also served as the U.S. minister to ...
purchased what became
Iroquois Park a year later and quickly began acquiring through donations the land to build -wide "Grand Boulevard" (later renamed Southern Parkway) connecting that southern property to the city. Jacob claimed the boulevard would rival
Champs-Élysées
The Avenue des Champs-Élysées (, ; ) is an avenue in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France, long and wide, running between the Place de la Concorde in the east and the Place Charles de Gaulle in the west, where the Arc de Triomphe is l ...
in Paris.
A parks commission was created in 1890, and soon hired Olmsted's firm to design the entire system. The firm delivered a report in September 1891 calling for three large parks and parkways connecting them.
The parkways were intended to carry light pleasure vehicles between the parks, with no access to heavier commercial vehicles. It was not until 1958 that the city opened up the parkways to all commercial and passenger traffic.
As the city expanded and the parkways became heavily traveled roads, they have been widened beyond their original two lanes, in many cases sacrificing the grass medians and tree-lined yards that were originally a part of them. Still, as of 2000, 75% of the original trees remained or had been replaced by new trees. There were 5,107 trees along the parkways according to a 1994 count.
Between 2008 and 2011, a major project was undertaken to restore many of the trees that had been damaged by storms, traffic, or age and disease. This has filled in many of the canopy gaps along the parkways, and was done as much as possible in accordance with the original Olmstedian plan. Today there are various proposals being debated to ease traffic issues and restore connectivity of the city's parks via these routes. One such plan involves bike lanes and center lanes for turning.
Parkways
Algonquin Parkway
Algonquin Parkway connects the Western parkways to Southern and Eastern Parkways via Third Street, cutting east-to-west across the city. The last of the parkways to be finished,
Algonquin was partially completed in 1928 by the Carey-Reed Company of Lexington at an initial cost of $120,000 with a width of just at the time, although space was reserved for widening once the area became more developed. When it opened it ran from Winkler Avenue to the Kentucky State Fairgrounds. The widening was finished in the late 1930s by workers for the
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
.
Algonquin has been cited as the "most extreme" example of a parkway that has deviated from the original plan, due to a junkyard that is located alongside it.
Eastern Parkway
Eastern Parkway begins at an intersection with Third Street in the Belknap (main) campus of the
University of Louisville
The University of Louisville (UofL) is a public research university in Louisville, Kentucky. It is part of the Kentucky state university system. When founded in 1798, it was the first city-owned public university in the United States and one o ...
. This portion ends a few blocks from Southern Parkway, and is a key gap between the parkways that has never been filled in. The portion through the University of Louisville campus was initially just two lanes, creating a major traffic bottleneck. This portion was replaced with a viaduct which passes over the campus, completed in October 1954 at a cost of $850,000. The viaduct was opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by mayor Broaddus, who then got into his car to become the first to drive over it. However, two vehicles competing to be the second collided, creating a wreck within seconds of the road's opening. Today, the parkway has one vehicular lane in each direction, plus painted bicycle gutters, through campus, widening to four lanes immediately east of the viaduct.
East of the university, there is an interchange with
Interstate 65, and past that the parkway takes on a more residential feel for the rest of the route, with houses and apartment buildings on either side, except for near major intersections. The parkway passes over a concrete channel
Beargrass Creek on an overpass built in 1961.
From Barrett to Baxter Avenue, the parkway is divided by a grassy median with mature trees. The final stretch of the parkway, past Bardstown Road, is the only two-lane portion outside of the U of L campus, although it is very wide, to allow for on-street parking. Eastern Parkway ends in a roundabout at the entrance to
Cherokee Park, at the center of which is a 1906 statue of
Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone (September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer and frontiersman whose exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. He became famous for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky, which was then beyond the we ...
made by
Enid Yandell
Enid Yandell (October 6, 1869 – June 12, 1934) was an American sculptor from Louisville, Kentucky who studied with Auguste Rodin in Paris, Philip Martiny in New York City, and Frederick William MacMonnies.
Yandell specialized in portrait bus ...
. Eastern Parkway is signed as
US 60
U.S. Route 60 is a major east–west United States highway, traveling from southwestern Arizona to the Atlantic Ocean coast in Virginia.
The highway's eastern terminus is in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where it is known as Pacific Avenue, in the ...
from Third Street to Willow Avenue, nearly the entire length of the parkway.
The right-of-way for Eastern Parkway is wide, and initial development of it was completed in late 1913. A long portion of the route was donated by
John Breckinridge Castleman, accounting for the sharp jog at the Baxter Avenue intersection.
Parkway Field
Parkway Field is the name of a baseball park that stood in Louisville, Kentucky. It was home to college, minor league, and negro league teams throughout its life, with the longest stints by the Louisville Colonels of the American Association f ...
took its name from and was located beside Eastern Parkway from 1926 until 2002.
The entire length of Eastern Parkway is signed as Alternate
US 60
U.S. Route 60 is a major east–west United States highway, traveling from southwestern Arizona to the Atlantic Ocean coast in Virginia.
The highway's eastern terminus is in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where it is known as Pacific Avenue, in the ...
, as US 60 followed the Parkway through the city before a bypass,
I-264 Interstate 264 is the designation for two Interstate Highways in the United States, both of which are related to Interstate 64:
*Interstate 264 (Kentucky), a bypass of Louisville, Kentucky
*Interstate 264 (Virginia)
Interstate 264 (I-264) i ...
, was created. Eastern Parkway has an interchange with
Interstate 65.
![ParkwaysOfLouisville](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/ParkwaysOfLouisville.png)
Although Eastern Parkway was intended as a recreational road, it is the only direct connector between the populous
Highlands
Highland is a broad term for areas of higher elevation, such as a mountain range or mountainous plateau.
Highland, Highlands, or The Highlands, may also refer to:
Places Albania
* Dukagjin Highlands
Armenia
* Armenian Highlands
Australia
*Sou ...
and
Germantown Germantown or German Town may refer to:
Places
Australia
* Germantown, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region
United States
* Germantown, California, the former name of Artois, a census-designated place in Glenn County
* Ge ...
sections of Louisville and mid-city destinations like the University of Louisville's main campus. As such, it has had problems associated with a road carrying much more traffic than it was designed for since at least the 1950s, when the intersection with Third Street consistently led the state of Kentucky in number of crashes per year at a single intersection. Various proposals have been made to improve safety on the road, including reducing it to three vehicle lanes and two bike lanes. Narrowing proposals were last made in 2006, although the plan was rejected since the traffic volume at the time, 21,000 vehicles per day, was too much for three lanes.
Northwestern/Southwestern Parkway
Northwestern and Southwestern Parkways were initially called just Western Parkway. A large amount of the right-of-way was donated by Democratic Party boss
John Henry Whallen
John Henry Whallen (May 1, 1850 – December 3, 1913) was a Democratic Party political boss in Louisville, Kentucky during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in New Orleans, he moved with his family to Cincinnati, Ohio in his youth. As a ...
, who made his residence near what is now Chickasaw Park.
Southern Parkway
First called Grand Boulevard, Southern Parkway runs from near
Churchill Downs to the entrance to
Iroquois Park. It begins at third street, near the Eastern Parkway intersection, and the two parkways can easily be combined to connect Iroquois to
Cherokee Park.
It was renamed Southern Parkway on June 6, 1893 and opened to the public eight days later.
References
{{reflist
Transportation in Louisville, Kentucky
National Register of Historic Places in Louisville, Kentucky
Works Progress Administration in Kentucky
Roads in Kentucky
Frederick Law Olmsted works
Roads on the National Register of Historic Places in Kentucky
Parks on the National Register of Historic Places in Kentucky