Emerald Necklace

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The Emerald Necklace is a long string of parks in Boston, Massachusetts designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and maintained by the City of Boston and Town of Brookline. These parks stretch from the Boston Common and Boston Public Garden in the north to Franklin Park in the south and include, from the northern end:

The Charles River Esplanade (which is not quite contiguous with the rest of the Necklace), and the Arborway and Jamaicaway, parkways that connect Jamaica Pond Park/Olmsted Park, Arnold Arboretum and Franklin Park, are sometimes considered to be part of the Emerald Necklace, but are maintained by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), formerly the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC). Olmsted also designed the parkways.

History

The park system had its beginnings with Olmsted's work, from around 1878, to clean up and control the marshy area which became the Fens. In 1880, he proposed that the Muddy River, which flowed from Jamaica Pond into the Fens, be included in the park plan. The river was dredged into a winding stream and directed into the Charles. The corridor encompassing the river became a linear park. Olmsted's vision of a linear park of walking paths along a gentle stream connecting numerous small lakes was complete by the turn of the century.

Nearby

Along or near the Emerald Necklace one can find:

The Museum of Science, Boston
The Hatch Shell, an outdoor musical performance venue along the Esplanade, famous for the televised Fourth of July celebrations performed by the Boston Pops festival orchestra
The Museum of Fine Arts
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox

The path of U.S. Route 1 passed through the Emerald Necklace until 1989, on the following roads from north to south:

Charles Street
Storrow Drive
Charlesgate
Park Drive/Fenway (one-way pair)
Riverway
Jamaicaway
Arborway

From there it continued along Centre Street and VFW Parkway, two DCR-maintained roads, to Dedham. U.S. 1 now follows the route of the present I-93 through downtown Boston's Big Dig tunnels.

External links

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