Overview

Short History

Features

The Parkway: Overview

The City Engineer produced this map of the first, experimental half mile of the Parkway built according to Olmsted’s design in 1909.

The Parkway is a 3-mile, tree-lined boulevard with two lanes running east and two running west that are separated largely by a wide grassy median that itself comprises 60 acres of parkland; technically, it commences on the west at Genesee Street and ends on the east at Welsh Bush Road. It is the only four-lane east-west artery in the city of Utica; two blocks from Genesee, at Oneida Street, the system’s first park, Roscoe Conkling, begins.

“The Parkway” is a fundamentally confusing term, as there is no single boulevard known simply by that name in Utica, and it is instead a blanket term encompassing three streets that together function as a coherent, four-lane whole:

  • Pleasant Street, a two-lane nineteenth century road that well predates the Parkway and effectively became the first half of the northern part of the Parkway, up to Clementian Street. For many years, people referred to this as the “lower Parkway.”
  • The Memorial Parkway (so named in 1950 to honor Uticans who died in the Second World War), a two-laned street that was built running parallel to Pleasant Street up to Clementian and Mohawk Streets, with a broad grassy median mostly to its north and Roscoe Conkling Park mostly to its south. It was constructed according to Olmsted’s design between 1909 and 1911. To distinguish it from the Pleasant Street component of the Parkway, for many years people referred to this as the “scenic Parkway” or “upper Parkway,” as part of it hugs Conkling Park hill and provides beautiful views of the Mohawk Valley.
  • Parkway East, a four-lane street that was built according to Olmsted’s design in 1911-19 as the eastern half of the Parkway, beginning originally as a two-lane street at Clementian, soon widening into a four-lane boulevard, and continuing up to Thomas R. Proctor Park. Some maps and some Uticans refer to the eastern half of the Parkway also as the “Memorial Parkway” but that is not consistent with the mailing addresses of all those who reside along this part of the boulevard or with the 1950 city ordinance that legislated the name “Memorial Parkway.”

Along with Conkling Park and Thomas R. Proctor and Frederick T. Proctor parks, the Parkway is part of what is known as the “Utica Parks and Parkway Historic District” on the National Register of Historic Places. In this regard, albeit on an obviously much more modest scale, the Parkway, and the parks it was meant to link, bear some kinship with other Olmsted family creations like the Emerald Necklace System and the Buffalo parks and parkway system.

However, the Parkway was originally constructed to connect not just the 3 parks on the National Register Listing but all 5 of the larger parks the Proctor family created for the people of Utica between 1899 and 1914—the other two parks being Horatio Seymour and Addison Miller parks. In addition, the eastern end of Burrstone Road, up to Addison Miller Park, and the western end of Culver Avenue, up to Frederick T. Proctor Park—both of which are contiguous with the Parkway—were originally considered part of Parkway. In short, the Parkway was originally conceived of as a 5-mile boulevard and greenbelt cradling much of the city of Utica and encompassing 5 parks. Over time, people locally ceased for various reasons to consider Burrstone Road and Culver Avenue (neither of which was designed by Olmsted) part of the Parkway.