parkway. Scenic road pioneered in America, laid out in an area of preserved forest or a swathe of enhanced landscape. A precedent was Olmsted's series of connected suburban public parks linked by road at Boston, MA, designed with Charles Eliot (1859–97), and completed 1902. However, the earliest appears to be that laid out (1913–23) by G. D. Clarke from Bronx Park to Kensico Dam, and this was created for recreational motoring, with access prohibited to anything other than private cars. W. H. Manning's Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Cincinnati Parkway followed, then Merritt Parkway, CT (1934–40), and S. W. Abbott's Blue Ridge Parkway (designed 1935) linking the Shenandoah and the Great Smoky Mountains National Parks. The design of parkways was to influence that of motorways.

Bibliography

Eliot (1902);
Radde (1993);
US Dept. Commerce (1966);
US NPS (1964);
Zapatka et al. (1995)

park·way / ˈpärkˌwā/ • n. an open landscaped highway.