Eastern Parkway is a major road that runs through a portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, it was the world's first parkway, having been built between 1870 and 1874. At the time of its construction, Eastern Parkway went to the eastern edge of Brooklyn, hence its name.
The road begins at Grand Army Plaza (the main entrance to Prospect Park) and extends east to Ralph Avenue, along the crest of the moraine that separates northern from southern Long Island. This section runs parallel to Atlantic Avenue and is aligned with the Crown Heights street grid. East of Ralph Avenue, it turns to the northeast, still following the moraine, until it terminates at Bushwick Avenue near the Evergreen Cemetery, where the moraine climbs steeply toward a peak at Ridgewood Reservoir. The initial portion of Eastern Parkway, west of Ralph Avenue, contains landscaped medians and is officially called by that name. The part east of Ralph Avenue is narrower and is officially known as Eastern Parkway Extension.
Eastern Parkway was built with the expectation that it would be the centerpiece of a neighborhood with "first-class" housing. Ultimately, the resulting development encompassed a variety of building styles including single-family homes, mansions, and apartment buildings. The parkway extension east of Ralph Avenue was built in the late 1890s. The neighborhoods around the parkway developed into a "Doctor's Row" in the late 19th century, and further settlement occurred with the opening of the New York City Subway's Eastern Parkway Line in 1920. The section of Eastern Parkway west of Ralph Avenue is a New York City designated landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places.
Route description
In the short westernmost portion, between Grand Army Plaza and Prospect Park (where it intersects with Prospect Park West, Flatbush Avenue, and Vanderbilt Avenue) and Washington Avenue, the thoroughfare consists of a broad, bidirectional avenue of six lanes, separated by a median from a narrow parallel service road on the north side. It passes Brooklyn Central Library, Brooklyn Museum, Mount Prospect Park, and Brooklyn Botanic Garden in this area; all of these are located on the south side of Eastern Parkway. The section between Washington and Ralph Avenues has a second service road on the south side, separated by another median. The parkway passes Bedford, Rogers, and Nostrand Avenues in this fashion before passing Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters and the Jewish Children's Museum in Crown Heights. It continues east, crossing Utica and Ralph Avenues.
East of Ralph Avenue, the parkway is reduced to six lanes, heading in a northeasterly direction toward Bushwick Avenue. Here, Eastern Parkway officially becomes Eastern Parkway Extension (though signage saying this only appears northeast of Broadway) and curves northeast to intersect with Howard Avenue, Atlantic Avenue, Fulton Street, and Broadway. In this area, Eastern Parkway runs diagonally to the rest of the street grid, creating several oblique intersections. At Bushwick Avenue, the Extension becomes Vanderveer Street, a dead-end street. The extension connects to the Jackie Robinson Parkway, three blocks southeast, via Bushwick Avenue.
Originally, Eastern Parkway east of Ralph Avenue continued down present-day Pitkin Avenue toward where Aqueduct Racetrack is today. The addresses along Pitkin Avenue are continuations of those on Eastern Parkway. Pitkin Avenue was created by the late 1890s when Eastern Parkway Extension was constructed. Eastern Park, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers before Ebbets Field, was located at Eastern Parkway and Vesta Avenue (now Pitkin Avenue at Van Sinderen Avenue, respectively).
Design
Eastern Parkway is credited as the world's first parkway to be built explicitly for personal and recreational traffic while restricting commercial traffic. Frederick Law Olmsted, the parkway's co-designer, described a parkway as "a shaded green ribbon" which might "be absolutely formal or strikingly picturesque, according to circumstances." Eastern and Ocean Parkways were planned together, though Eastern Parkway was intended to be the more grand of the two. The section between Washington and Ralph Avenues is wide between curbs, with two service roads, two medians, and a main road. Both medians have trees, benches, and paths for pedestrians. These medians contain sidewalks with hexagonal asphalt tiles and benches made of concrete or wood.
Eastern Parkway Extension is wide between curbs, with two sidewalks. This section has a narrower median of between separating each direction of traffic. There are three lanes in each direction.