Saving parkways and a legacy

by Renata Von Tscharner and Brian F. Keane, 4/30/2001

Have you ever noticed how peaceful and attractive the drive can be down the Jamaicaway as it traces the descent of the Emerald Necklace into the Fenway? Or beneath the majestic sycamores lining Memorial Drive along the Charles River? It is because these tree-lined thoroughfares are parkways, which are as distinct from highways as symphonic compositions are from elevator music.

Parkways define and protect Boston's parks, creating dual-purpose roads. While serving as conduits for vehicular traffic, they also create transitional space between busy business or neighborhood areas and the peaceful sanctuary of the parks themselves.

But these treasured hallmarks of Boston style are in danger of being absorbed into a state highway system where trees and scenic vistas are subordinated to traffic flow and unyielding federal guidelines. Proposed legislation would remove parkways from the stewardship of the Metropolitan District Commission, orphaning them in the vast bureaucracy of the State Department of Transportation. There the unceasing compulsion to go further and faster will inevitably strip them of their unique identity.

Almost unknown to residents of Greater Boston, we are the beneficiaries of an extraordinary legacy: the world's first integrated urban park system. Familiar places like the Fellsway, the Emerald Necklace, and Quincy Shore Drive are elements of what was known originally as the Metropolitan Park System.

To call them jewels is not an exaggeration. Their sinuous design, tree-lined borders, and inspiring vistas stand in marked contrast to the superhighways whose vast reach and choked lanes make Boston commuting such a physical and emotional burden.

Parkways, if we respect their intentions, create a relaxed, enjoyable way to drive from point to point. The reduced speeds they demand, their greenery, and their relation to the parks they encompass must be viewed as part of a unique heritage, inextricably linked to the notion that public places can possess rare beauty.

Devised by the visionary landscape architect Charles Eliot and his mentor and friend Frederick Law Olmsted at the end of the 19th century, the MDC parks and connecting parkways stretch from Revere to Wallaston Beach, with the Charles River Basin parklands and the Esplanade at their center.

Since the mid-1950s and the building of Storrow Drive, the park system has been in decline. Now, two pieces of proposed state legislation threaten an imaginative new initiative to reclaim greenspace on the Charles River Basin and the overall integrity of the Metropolitan Park System.

One bill has been filed by former Governor Cellucci, the other by state Senator Michael Morrissey. Both would strip the Metropolitan District Commission, protector of the parkways, of their control, potentially compromising a unique part of Olmsted's and Eliot's grand vision.

Why should we care about the management and maintenance of roads that to many are no more than a way to get from one place to another? The answer lies in understanding the character of the parkways, especially their contribution to our quality of life and sense of place.

In a time not so long ago, Bostonians enjoyed public amenities rarely found elsewhere. To motor along the Jamaicaway or the Fellsway was to enter into a world of enchantment saturated with the colors of the passing seasons.

On a summer's evening or a weekend, the parkways provided access to parks of singular beauty; to skating, swimming and sailing; as well as places to promenade or attend a band concert.

Many of those amenities have dwindled away in the face of neglect, but in an inspired attempt to rejuvenate the Charles River Basin parklands -- Greater Boston's Central Park -- the intrepid planning staff at the MDC has devised a comprehensive master plan. What a sad irony it would be if the planned Sunday road closings and recapture of green space along Greenough Boulevard in Cambridge, just two elements in the MDC plan, were to be lost in the bureaucratic shuffle.

The proposed folding of the MDC parkways into the Department of Transportation represents a failure of imagination on all our parts, equivalent to tossing a rare and delicate textile into the wash for lack of understanding of its true value.

The issue is not, as the legislation proposes, the cost savings inherent in transferring control of the parkways from a downsized MDC to a more robust state agency; it is how shall we sustain and enhance one of the world's great park systems and the roads that give it definition. To hurriedly pack them up, slip a hastily scribbled note of instruction into a pocket, and ship them off to the State Department of Transportation is simply wrong.

Informative signage, creative traffic management, and energetic restoration are the antidote for our endangered MDC parkways. Certainly Boston needs a diverse, highly sophisticated transportation system to sustain its march into the 21st century. But it also must be mindful of its past and the value of its parkways as vital parts of its unique heritage.

These elegant thoroughfares are, after all, spokes radiating from the Hub of the Universe, the luster of which will be irreparably harmed if our parkways are not jealously guarded.

The Commonwealth would be better served with legislation that funds the planned restoration of the Charles River Basin parklands and goes the extra mile in extending landmark status to the MDC parks and parkway system.

Renata von Tscharner is president of the Charles River Conservancy. Brian F. Keane is director of External Affairs for the Conservation Law Foundation.

This story ran on page 11 of the Boston Globe on 4/30/2001 and is reprinted here with permission.

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