Olmsted’s second real estate project in Utica was located on the former site of the Yahnundasis golf course (which was moved to its present site, 2.5 miles to the south), and when the project began in 1914, the site was still part of the town of New Hartford (it was annexed by Utica in 1921). Although it was not the largest of the Olmsted-designed real estate development undertakings in Utica, it was the most intensively designed one. Olmsted Brothers generated designs not just for the streets, sidewalks, lots, and landscaping, but also for the imposing gateways, lampposts, and even manhole covers and drains.
Like all other Olmsted-designed neighborhoods, the streets and building lots were laid out and graded in a manner most consistent with the natural topography of the site—in this case, a site that rolls gently downward to meet Genesee Street. The design was simple but elegant. Commencing from the southeastern entrance at Oneida Street, the street forks one-third the way down to create an island at its center, also occupied by homes, which terminates (thus reuniting both sides of Proctor Boulevard) before the street reaches its northwestern terminus at Genesee Street. Near the Genesee Street intersection, there was to be a very small public green space that was ultimately omitted.
Each entrance is marked by striking pedestrian passageways: rough stone, shingle-canopied arches at Oneida Street (done in a more rustic manner, as befits its proximity to Roscoe Conkling Park and historic Forest Hill Cemetery), and stately squared granite columns at Genesee Street, Utica’s main north-south thoroughfare. Flanking the Genesee Street gates (for which Olmsted produced a number of designs) are four extra-large lots (750-100 feet wide, 250 feet deep), which complemented the boulevard’s grand terminus on the area’s historically most important street.
Proctor Boulevard was the brainchild of Hugh R. Jones, one of the developers who created Brookside Park the previous year, 1913; he launched the project under the name of the Brookside Park Company, but by the time he brought the project to market, he was doing business as the Hugh R. Jones Company, the name he would use in future collaborations with Olmsted Brothers and more generally in business.
The marketing of Proctor Boulevard was sophisticated and elaborate, most notably the beautifully-designed, ten-page illustrated prospectus Jones created for potential investors. The themes evident in the marketing of Brookside, in upper east Utica, in 1913 were again evident in the promotion of Proctor Boulevard. Like Brookside, it was designed and pitched as an enclave that would be exclusive because it would consist of and be surrounded by single-family homes the minimum cost of which was set so high as to be beyond what the average person could afford. “Proctor Boulevard will never be less than it is today,” the brochure assured, and its boast remains justified over a century later, as it remains very desirable, like other Olmsted-designed neighborhoods in Utica.
Proctor Boulevard was also designed to be “a convenient distance from the din and clatter of the city,” and yet, with trolley car lines running along Genesee and Oneida Streets, it would be “within ten or twelve minutes of the business section of Utica”—and only six to eight minutes by automobile. “It is therefore a place of Country Comfort and every conceivable City Convenience,” concluded the Jones marketing brochure.
So popular was Proctor Boulevard that beautiful neighborhoods not designed by Olmsted Brothers were built locally by other real estate developers in an Olmstedian style. Perhaps most notable among these neighborhoods was Blaikie Heights, which blends so seamlessly and was designed so well that people often assume, understandably, that it is part of the Proctor Boulevard development. Launched in 1924, Blaikie Heights is comprised of Douglas Crescent (which directly adjoins Proctor Boulevard and contains a garden island and a pocket park in the Olmsted style), Ferris Avenue, Bonnie Brae, and Ballantyne Brae.
Hugh R. Jones’ marketing brochure for Proctor Boulevard (1914)
The Olmsted design (1914) for lamp posts for Proctor Boulevard.
Proctor Boulevard street and lot layout, as depicted in the Jones marketing brochure
Design for the extra-deep lots flanking the Genesee Street entrance to Proctor Boulevard.
The lots flanking the Genesee Street entrance to Proctor Boulevard, as they appear today, essentially as Olmsted envisioned.
Olmsted Brothers design (1915) of the granite gates for the Genesee Street entrance to Proctor Boulevard, bearing the signature of Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (lower right corner). The title refers to the Brookside Park Company, the name under which Hugh R. Jones, having just created the Brookside development with Olmsted in 1913, operated when he began the Proctor Boulevard project—he would soon conduct business under his own name.
The Oneida Street gates of Proctor Boulevard, made of fieldstone and timber construction, reflective not only of Olmsted style but also the rural character of that side of the development when it was completed in 1914—in contrast to the more formal, classically-designed granite gates on Genesee Street, Utica’s main north-south thoroughfare.