pleasant drive from Bronx Park out to the city's Westchester County and to give New York the sort of road from the north that it needed badly. A commission first had accurate surveys made, then of the necessary lands and with making them more early essay in removal of negative values from the site more than justified taking the land and creating no roadway had been built. The before and after Bronx River valley, appearing in popular magazines, is an interesting one of lay citizens all over the country (Figs. 370, 371, and 372, case, it convinced a future landscape architect that he wanted to enter.

The proposed roadway had been undertaken, with some problems as well as to the road itself. Of course this meant and other eyesores, particularly those that for years and years on railway lines entering the city. Curvatures to prevailing speeds, then in the neighborhood of 20 miles per hour. Construction was begun, halted for the duration of the year in 1919, and substantially completed in 1923 at the high Kensico Dam of the New York water-supply system. The cost of development had been borne by the state of New York, one-quarter by Westchester County. The original Bronx River Parkway, is generally called the "Bronx River Parkway" in the United States.

A park-lane affair, its curvatures began with an almost perpendicular look in Bronx Park (Fig. 372), then gradually longer radii as the alignment crept northward (Fig. 373). A valley, local streets could bridge overhead. The cars of any kind (even painted lines were a late development places the northbound and southbound lanes were dependent levels around hillocks with excellent stands of trees) of the divided roadway technique that later came into use. In recent years the New York City end of the paved park was altered for modern automotive speeds, but it is to be preferred by the original Bronx River Parkway, up to the point where it is to be retained in its early form for the sake of historical interest. The width of the parkway was determined by the density of holding for these few miles to slower but still

safe. The use of generous parkway width to defeat Of course no such monstrosities were permitted on the parkway, however, though they had no right of access, and the park was weakened before the onslaught of outdoor advertising on the billboard locations just beyond the boundary of the

372. The new Bronx River Parkway, with its narrow and twisting roadway, near the Woodlawn section above Bronx Park in 1922.

parkway strip. In such cases, dense plantations on parkway land in front of erected billboards, repeated if necessary as locations were moved, eventually provided a sufficiently convincing discouragement. This is still one of the most persuasive reasons for taking the widest practicable parkway strips from the very beginning of a project.

The Bronx River Parkway had one major unexpected result: for Westchester County the new facility was a resounding success, not only in public acclaim but also in the notable increase in market value, and therefore in assessed valuations and tax returns, of properties nearby. It so strongly impressed the county's authorities that as it neared completion the Board of Supervisors obtained from the 1922 session of the New York State Legislature a law setting up an entirely new body, the Westchester County Park Commission, with authority to acquire lands for parks and parkways. The Bronx Parkway Commission, on completion of its task, was abolished by agreement, and the portion of the Bronx River Parkway lying in Westchester County was transferred to jurisdiction of the new commission.

The Westchester County Park Commission (WCPC) organized an outstanding technical staff. The chief engineer, Jay Downer, had held that post under the Bronx Parkway Commission. The landscape architect, Gilmore D. Clarke, had been superintendent of construction on the newly completed