HAER Report

Wrapping Up Construction

As the bridges were being built along the parkway, final preparations were made for paving, guardrail construction, lighting, landscaping, and various other details.

Although most of the roadbed had been graded by 1922, the BPC continued to modify the road alignment based on repeated on-site inspections. The BPC eliminated several of the separated one-way drives Hermann Merkel had proposed in his 1918 landscape development during this period. In early 1921, the commissioners directed Downer to investigate whether a single four-lane road could be laid along the pipeline bed between Fleetwood Street and Palmer Road instead of separating the drives into two two-lane pavements. Another change in road layout was approved from Amsterdam Avenue to just north of St. Nicholas Avenue, where the proposed dual pavements were merged into one drive following the location of the original southbound drive. Jay Downer argued that a single four-lane pavement would be better in this location, since he had observed that many drivers did not keep to the right at the intersections of separated drives. He argued that it would be safer and easier to eliminate this short stretch of divided road.(249) After William Niles and Frank Bethell inspected the parkway north of Cemetery Road, they recommended that the separate drives proposed for this location be combined into a single 40'-wide drive in order to leave more land available for either a pedestrian path or bridle trail. Combining the roadways would also eliminate a "dangerously sharp" curve near Fisher Street. The BPC approved these changes of alignment.(250) When the parkway opened in 1925, only four locations retained separate one-way drives: Wakefield, Tuckahoe, Scarsdale, and North White Plains. Gilmore Clarke later wrote that Merkel had wanted the entire parkway to have separated one-way drives, but was overruled by the BPC on practical and economic grounds.(251) Divided roadways increased safety and made travel more pleasant, but the BPC maintained that the parkway reservation did not provide sufficient right-of-way to construct two parallel drives in most locations. Even if the parkway corridor had been wider, the BPC did not have sufficient funding to afford the expense of additional grading, paving, and grade separation construction.

The BPC continued to open each section of the parkway as soon as possible after it was completed. By 1922, the drive was open from Bronx Park to Mount Vernon and from Scarsdale to White Plains. In 1923 Leslie Holleran reported that the parkway was already difficult to control, especially on Sundays and holidays when great numbers of cars drove the road. He noted that people were leaving cars parked on the main driveway and along the grassy shoulders. Newly planted trees and shrubs were being broken or stolen, and other "depredations" were being committed. BPC employees could do little to protect the land from abusive visitors since there were no official parkway regulations in place. BPC counsel was ordered to draft rules for the parkway. The commissioners also agreed that guardrails should be erected along the entire length of the road to keep cars on the pavement and protect the parkway. Madison Grant had driven the road and reported that cars drove on the grass and anywhere they could. Guardrails would keep cars where they belonged and prevent drivers from driving on the surrounding landscape, either intentionally or unintentionally.(252)