1876: A Premier Parkway in Brooklyn is Introduced to the Public

November 18, 1876

The entire segment of Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, New York, was opened to the public about two years after construction on that route had begun. (Brooklyn was still an independent incorporated city at the time and would not become a borough of New York City until 1898.) The new parkway, spanning 5.5 miles (8.9 kilometers) between Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and the Atlantic Ocean at Coney Island Beach, had been designed by renowned landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824-1895). Their plans for Ocean Parkway were heavily influenced by the elegant boulevards of Paris and Berlin.

“This Parkway constitutes one of the finest, if not the finest drives in the country,” asserted the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on the day of the road’s formal opening. “It is of stately width, is bordered by trees that are now fine and will in time be grand; it has on either side pathways for pedestrians and has roadways parallel to the main passage for ordinary traffic.” The “main passage” portion of Ocean Parkway was 70 feet (21.3 meters) wide. Each of the side roads measured 25 feet (7.6 meters) in width, and the adjacent sidewalks were each 15 feet (4.6 meters) wide.   

Ocean Parkway, which remains in existence today, eventually gained far-reaching recognition as one of the premier American avenues of that era. “If horses are to be speeded, the centre road-bed can give the best opportunity for those inclined to risk their necks, while on the side roads, those with less ambitions can jog in perfect comfort,” reported the New York Times in a May 1877 article appraising the route. The article also noted, “Other cities may have their Champs Élysées, their Prater, their Cachina, but Ocean Parkway . . . is a work of suburban embellishment without rival.” (The attached postcard depicting this parkway’s terminus at Prospect Park was created in 1904.)

Image Credit: From the New York Public Library (https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/4859f090-c55f-012f-a192-58d385a7bc34?canvasIndex=0)

For more information on the Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, please check out https://www.tclf.org/landscapes/ocean-parkway and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Parkway_(Brooklyn)