page_title: Park Drive (parkway)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Park Drive (parkway) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Park Drive sign near the parkway's beginning at Boylston Street in Boston.
context_page_description: Park Drive is a mostly one-way, two-lane parkway in the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood of Boston that runs along the northern and western edges of the Back Bay Fens before ending at Mountfort Street. As part of the Emerald Necklace park system mainly designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in the late 19th century, Park Drive, along with the Back Bay Fens and the Fenway, connects the Commonwealth Avenue Mall and Boylston Street to Beacon Street and the Riverway. For a portion of its length, the parkway runs along the Muddy River and is part of the Metropolitan Park System of Greater Boston's Muddy River Reservation. Like others in the park system, it is maintained by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation.
context_section_description: In 1875, the voters of the City of Boston and the Massachusetts legislature approved the creation of a park commission in order to promote the creation of public parks in the city. Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect of New York City's Central Park, began to spend an increasing amount of time in the area and was asked by the park commission in the mid-to-late 1870s to be the judge of a 23-entry design competition to build a new park. Olmsted felt that all of the submitted plans were subpar and either did not take into account flood control or focused too much on it and neglected the public park aspect. The Muddy River and Stony Brook flowed through the Back Bay Fens (an artificial marshland commonly referred to as the Fens) which were at the time subject to tidal flow, storm flooding, and sewage discharge. The disappointed park commission then asked Olmsted to be its professional adviser and main landscape architect. Under his direction, what is now called the Emerald Necklace took shape. He directed the Fens to be dredged, graded, planted, and turned into a seemingly natural salt marsh to absorb and clean the flowing waters. He then built a series of parks stretching from the Fens near the existing Commonwealth Avenue greenway to Franklin Park some miles away. The parks were connected to each other by scenic parkways, one of which is Park Drive around the northern and western sides of the Back Bay Fens. Originally Park Drive was named Audubon Road in conjunction with the adjoining Audubon Circle, at the intersection with Beacon Street, in honor of the Audubon Society and the vast avian population within the Olmsted designed Fens. Nearby Hemenway Street was also named after Harriet Hemenway one of the founders of the Massachusetts Audubon Society The parkway was renamed Park Drive sometime between 1928 and 1938 when alterations to the Fens resulted in a large part of the artificial marshland being filled for more formal parkland .
  As part of the Metropolitan Park System of Greater Boston, Park Drive is maintained by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), rather than the City of Boston.
  The roadway from Boylston Street to Brookline Avenue opened to traffic on January 3, 1892, while surfacing of the remainder of the parkway to Mountfort Street was finished by 1895.
caption: Easternmost end of Park Drive near Boylston Street.
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