Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
places for neighborhood residents to engage in sports and games. Many of
Washington's playgrounds and recreation facilities date from this period.
45
The rapid rise in automobile ownership after World War I confronted
park managers with new challenges. On the one hand, the proliferation of
automobiles overwhelmed existing park roads, which had been designed to
accommodate the carriages of the urban elite. Questions were quickly
raised about the impacts of automobile traffic on parks, which ranged from
noise, congestion, and noxious fumes to the rapid deterioration of road sur-
faces and the introduction of an ill-behaved class of park users, who raced
about in their motorcars with little concern for the finer points of land-
scape appreciation. On the other hand, the spread of middle-class and even
working-class automobile ownership enabled many urbanites to range far
and wide in search of nature and rural scenery.This unprecedented mobil-
ity helped ease the burden on urban parks while providing a strong con-
stituency for the development of wide-ranging county, regional, and
statewide park systems. Park planners in Washington and throughout the
country expanded their horizons, developing ambitious proposals for elab-
orate networks of parks, beaches, and recreation areas that would be linked
with each other and tied to city centers with lengthy and lavishly devel-
oped automobile parkways. While parkways had been integral to urban
park schemes since the 1870s, the automobile elevated them to even greater
prominence as both city planners and the general public rapidly realized
they could serve double duty as attractive recreational corridors and effi-
cient commuter arteries.
46
The evolution of Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway exemplified
national trends. The long delay between the parkway's conception and its
completion coincided with America's transition from horse and buggy to
automobile. Changing perceptions of the parkway's intended form and
function were evident in both the evolution of the project's design and the
shifting language employed to explain its attractions and significance. Early
plans called for an elaborate network of carriage drives, pedestrian prome-
nades, and bridle paths surrounded by elaborate picturesque plantings. Sub-
sequent development, together with the wider, straighter roads required by
automobiles, resulted in the elimination of many picturesque design fea-
tures, a significant reduction in the number of exits and entrances, and a
general simplification of the parkway landscape. Extensive excavations,
grading, and plantings were still required to transform the polluted valley
into a seemingly “natural” landscape, but topographic manipulations and
