The Parkway: Short History
In the early twentieth century, Thomas R. Proctor began advocating for the creation of a wide, tree-lined boulevard with a grassy median that would itself serve as a park. After they became acquainted in 1906, Proctor shared his vision with Olmsted, who needed no prompting, as his father had invented the concept of the American parkway about 30 years before, notably first in Buffalo and then in Louisville, Kentucky.
In the spring of 1906, presumably at Proctor’s urging, the Utica Chamber of Commerce hired Olmsted to conduct a citywide study of Utica, with an eye on recommendations for future planning purposes. Among his recommendations was a boulevard spanning the east-west axis of the city, as Proctor had advocated; Olmsted first drafted the design of the Parkway, from Genesee Street to Welsh Bush Road, in 1906.
His historic report—one of the first Olmsted created for any American municipality—was published in 1908, and in 1909 the City of Utica built a first short expanse of approximately one-half mile, from Genesee to Elm Street (today the site of the Swan Memorial Fountain) that was intended to give Uticans some sense of what a full-scale parkway would look like if they were to support its construction. The public approved, and the City therefore hired Olmsted to advise them in the planning and construction of the rest of the Parkway in two more stages: from Elm Street to Mohawk in 1910-11; from Mohawk to Culver Avenue in 1911-19.
Pleasant Street was incorporated into the design of the Parkway even while retaining its separate name—in a sense, “the Parkway” refers as much to a place as it does to a roadway. In addition, the Parkway was intended to link with part of another preexisting road to the west of Genesee Street called Burrstone Road, at least past Horatio Seymour Park and up to Addison Miller Park, two smaller pre-Olmsted parks that were built by the Proctors and donated to the people of Utica in 1907. In the early days of the Parkway, this half-mile stretch of Burrstone was so tree-covered and designed to links so seamlessly with the Parkway that it was sometimes referred to as “Parkway West.” Unfortunately, road modernization imposed by the State Department of Transportation in the early 1970s so altered that part of Burrstone Road and denuded it of trees that it is hard to imagine now that it had once been considered a spur of the Parkway.
Somewhat similarly, the half mile of Culver Avenue—from where the newly-constructed Parkway East met it at Welsh Bush Road—to the entrance of F.T. Proctor Park was at one time also spoken of as being part of the Parkway. This is because the Parkway was originally intended to be the “way” to the parks that the Proctors had constructed for the people of Utica, and F.T. Proctor was the easternmost and most recently created park in the system. In addition, in those early days, not only was Culver Avenue unpaved, but it was largely devoid of settlement. Olmsted urged the City of Utica to buy up a wide right-of-way along Culver before that part of the city became too developed and so that they might one day extend the four-lane parkway at least up to the gates of F.T. Proctor Park, which was built in 1912-14.
Unfortunately, once the city completed the process of paving Culver up to F.T. Proctor Park in 1919, the era of parkway building was over, and Olmsted’s vision was never fully realized. Consequently, over the years, Culver Avenue ceased to be referred to as part of the Parkway, and the suggestion that it ever was so considered is unknown even to most people who live in and around Utica.