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The excellent Wikipedia entry on the Parkway shows the lengths the engineers went to:. Curves that climbed or descended were banked to increase vehicle traction and permit better drainage. Likewise the curves in undulating terrain are located to reduce blind spots at crests and keep the sharpest turns out of valleys. These also make sure that views of distant landscapes open up on downgrades and on long curves, when they are less distracting.
Closer to the road, on the northern sections in Columbia and Dutchess counties, the road was routed to showcase a nearby view of wooded hillside or a farm.
Since trucks were not permitted on the road, in many sections tree branches overhang the roadways, creating a park-like feel. It was laid out with an eye to giving travelers scenic vistas of the Hudson Highlands , the Taconics , the Catskills , the Hudson River Valley as the road sweeps over the landscape. From the Wikipedia article :. Closer to the road, on the northern sections in Columbia and Dutchess counties, the road was routed to showcase a nearby view of wooded hillside or a farm.
Since trucks were not permitted on the road, in many sections tree branches overhang the roadways, creating a park-like feel. The curve of the northbound Amvets bridge over Croton Reservoir echoes the surrounding hills. On the medians and berms, plantings were carefully planned to maintain continuity with the surrounding woods.
On the descent into Peekskill Hollow in Putnam Valley, the trees and shrubs above the retaining wall on the east side were transplanted from the path of the highway, which retained the appearance of the local forest and saved money. Ramps can be tight - they were built for a slower era. While some sections have been updated with steel guard rails, much of it retains the character of the original design, with stone walls and stone facing on bridges.
Be warned, deer can be a problem at twilight and after dark - the Parkway is very open to the landscape. There are no services on the TSP there used to be, but they were closed years ago. You'll have to find them on the side roads. The Taconic State Parkway is a link to all kinds of outdoor opportunities, like Fahnestock , Baird , and Lake Taghkanic state parks among others.
There are historic sites all up and down the Hudson River Valley. Here's one ; here's another. Four years later, the Westchester County Park Commission Report described the natural attractions of the region through which the parkway passed as follows: From Briarcliff Manor northward through Mohansic Park and leading up to the gateway of the Hudson River Highlands at Peekskill, the parkway threads a region of wild, picturesque scenery.
The parkway will disclose the scenic charm of a region of Westchester now unknown to the motoring public.
The new Taconic State Parkway, which included one major park and three small picnic areas, was completed in in two parts: the "Bronx Parkway Extension" from the Kensico Dam Plaza to the Bear Mountain Parkway, and the four-mile-long spur north to the Westchester-Putnam border, known as the "state parkway," which linked the Westchester parkway system to the parkway being planned by the new Taconic State Park Commission.
When the Taconic State Parkway was completed through Westchester County, it consisted of a foot-wide undivided roadway, 12 highway bridges, two railroad bridges, and a foot steel arch bridge spanning Croton Lake.
With the exception of the Croton Lake Bridge, the grade separations followed the stone-arch design convention established earlier on the Long Island and Westchester parkways. Service stations and restaurants built along the route were designed to blend in with the rustic surroundings of the areas through which the parkway passed.
Like its predecessor, the Taconic State Parkway took a valley route, and was designed with narrow, unseparated lanes, a relatively narrow right-of-way, and a tightly framed landscape consisting of local vegetation and earthen berms that screened out the dense development of the county.
The Taconic State Parkway played an important role not only establishing standards in transportation planning, but also in preserving open space amid rapid suburbanization. The original "Eastern State Parkway" was built as a four-lane undivided roadway through the area.
V, The "standardized" stone-arch design overpass was erected in Later sections of the parkway benefited from safety advances such as wide grade medians and higher design speeds. The parkway and four proposed state parks tied to the parkway were to provide the backbone for the state park system in the eastern Hudson Valley. However, the northward progress of the Taconic State Parkway ran into roadblocks.
At the same time, Robert Moses was seeking to procure funds for his Long Island park and arterial system. Moses had a distinct advantage: he chaired the State Parks Council, which allocated funds to parks and parkway projects throughout the state. Moses slashed Roosevelt's budget requests, and even said that the Taconic Parkway should not extend north to Albany, but end in Westchester County.
Caro's The Power Broker : Roosevelt had at least one bitter face-to-face confrontation with Moses, the details of which can only be imagined. Then Roosevelt tried to go over Moses' head. In December , he wrote Smith asking the Governor to restore the funds he had requested.
But Smith was taking Moses' word as to what was happening in park matters. He asked Moses about the Taconic situation and Moses wrote Smith: "I suggest you write him Roosevelt a letter along the line attached. The route of the parkway avoided towns and villages, and like the earlier section, incorporated parks in its design.
Roosevelt selected a route that would take motorists through a high, narrow ridge bounded by the Hudson River and the Catskills Mountains to the west, and by the Berkshire Mountains to the east. Unlike Moses, whose parkways encouraged the motorist to remain focused on the right-of-way, Roosevelt incorporated the sweeping landscape of rugged mountains and family farms into the design of the northern Taconic. This pastoral landscape supported his view of the history of the Hudson Valley.
This section also featured narrow, undivided lanes; however, taking the parkway through rugged mountainous terrain was a new challenge. Deep cuts were necessary, and the steep terrain dictated extensive use of stone retaining walls and rustic wooden guardrails. A long curve back to the northwest again takes the Taconic to the first of its two interchanges with NY 82, at Arthursburg.
Almost a mile to its north, the Arthursburg Road at-grade crossing has been closed, and a southbound off-ramp and on-ramp were built. The road bends back north into the town of LaGrange to the next exit a half-mile beyond, at Noxon Road CR 21 , a new exit accessible only to northbound traffic via an off-ramp. The road widens through a wooded area and then narrows past another former service area just before Todd Hill Road, where the at-grade crossing portion has been closed. The road drops to cross a creek, then rises again to the NY 55 exit, one of two roads serving the city of Poughkeepsie to the west, near Freedom Plains.
Its slow undulation with the landscape continues past the now closed Skidmore Road grade crossing as it heads due north into the town of Pleasant Valley and the less developed half of Dutchess County. The roadways separate widely feet, or m again for a mile in the woods east of James Baird State Park. The two roadways descend and come together again by the Mountain Road grade crossing.
A quarter-mile m to the north, a dead-end road leaves the northbound lane for the nearby Taconic—Hereford Multiple Use Area. Several other local roads cross the parkway until it reaches one of its straightest stretches, which then curves to the first grade-separated exit in several miles, US 44, the other main route to Poughkeepsie, between Millbrook and Pleasant Valley.
The road passes through a much more wooded area as it makes a long curve into its next junction, the grade intersection at Hibernia Road. A bridge over Wappinger Creek 0. Another half-mile north, at the next exit, NY has its eastern terminus while Salt Point Turnpike continues. A slight western slant continues as the parkway traverses a landscape now thoroughly rural, with fields and woodlots alternating.
Two more grade crossings, at Willow and Pumpkin lanes, follow through a long curve to the east and back. At Nine Partners Road, the Taconic is back on a northward heading as it slips east of the Stanford town line. It begins to climb onto the high ground between the Hudson and the Taconics to the east. To the west there are occasional glimpses across the river valley to the Catskill Escarpment to the west. From here the parkway bends eastward again, entering the town of Milan and climbs slowly through generally wooded area, passing another grade crossing at Cold Spring Road.
The next exit, at NY , is the last in Dutchess County. The parkway terrain in Columbia is similar to that in Dutchess, with more views opening up in the north as the road levels out.
The surrounding farms and woods get more extensive. After entering the county, the Taconic continues due north through the town of Gallatin through unbroken woods.
It bends slightly to the intersection with CR 8 to pass the beach at Lake Taghkanic State Park, with the access road for the park leaving to the east at grade from the northbound lanes where the highway enters the Town of Taghkanic.
Another half-mile to the north is the second interchange with NY North of that exit, the parkway bends to the northeast again, paralleling the orientation of the county as a whole.
It crosses briefly into the town of Claverack, then back into Taghkanic before re-entering Claverack as it heads due east briefly, then north again into the NY 23 exit near the hamlet of Martindale.
It bends from the northerly heading back to the northeast to cross into Ghent over the next three miles 5 km , where NY comes to its eastern terminus at the exit with the Taconic. Past a rise beyond that exit, there are scenic overlook parking areas on both sides of the highway with panoramic views west to the Catskills. At night the lights of Albany are visible to the northwest. The road curves again into the town of Austerlitz, where a diner and gas station off grade-separated Rigor Hill Road are accessible at grade.
The Taconic continues on a heading closer to the north from here for five more miles 9 km to the NY exit in the northwest corner of Austerlitz.
It then crosses into Chatham, where signs warn drivers that the NY exit is the last before the Thruway tolls at the end of the road. The grade intersections in the next few miles are open only to southbound traffic, primarily allowing commercial vehicles that have mistakenly ventured onto the parkway to exit. Landscape architects like Gilmore Clarke worked closely with engineers and construction crews during the Taconic's construction, often on site.
Some features of the road's design address practical considerations and increase safety. Curves that climbed or descended were banked to increase vehicle traction and permit better drainage. Likewise the curves in undulating terrain are located to reduce blind spots at crests and keep the sharpest turns out of valleys. These also make sure that views of distant landscapes open up on downgrades and on long curves, when they are less distracting.
Closer to the road, on the northern sections in Columbia and Dutchess counties, the road was routed to showcase a nearby view of wooded hillside or a farm. Since trucks were not permitted on the road, in many sections tree branches overhang the roadways, creating a park-like feel.
The curve of the northbound Amvets bridge over Croton Reservoir echoes the surrounding hills. On the medians and berms, plantings were carefully planned to maintain continuity with the surrounding woods. On the descent into Peekskill Hollow in Putnam Valley, the trees and shrubs above the retaining wall on the east side were transplanted from the path of the highway, which retained the appearance of the local forest and saved money.
Overpasses, both carrying roads over the parkway and carrying it over roads, were faced in native stone. The grade intersections, usually a feature engineers tried to avoid, helped keep local east—west routes open and connect the parkway to the landscape it traversed. As a result, the Taconic has been the subject of much praise over the years not only for its vistas but for the way it harmonizes with the surrounding landscape. Sociologist Lewis Mumford, who often criticized the effect of superhighway construction on contemporary cities, always advised friends traveling up from New York to visit him at his house in Amenia that they should take the Taconic to do so.
He described it as "a consummate work of art, fit to stand on a par with our loftiest creations". The engineers, he said, had avoided "brutal assaults against the landscape". Albany-born novelist William Kennedy, whose family frequently drove the Taconic during his childhood to visit relatives further south, calls it "a mile postcard.
Commenting on this years later, architecture critic Matthew Gandy wrote:. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with sections of the road modified from its original design and the rest areas mostly gone, writers for The New York Times have variously described the Taconic as "a pleasure to use, evoking those bygone days when people went for a drive just for the fun of it" and "unquestionably among the most scenic roadways in the Northeast, winding along the Hudson Valley with a painter's eye for landscape and a gearhead's idea of fun.
The parkway's engineering principles evolved over the four decades it took to build, with northern sections reflecting improvements in construction technology and lessons learned from the early days of construction. Some aspects of the original road remained consistent from end to end.
The Westchester County sections were laid out by the county's parks commission based on the parkways they had already designed. Its engineers later worked on the design of the upper sections. In its early days, the Taconic State Parks Commission TSPC did not have enough money to hire a full engineering staff, with terrain that presented some major challenges.
Its engineer, E. Howe, on loan from the state's Department of Public Works, frequently complained about the commission's directive that he plan a route only where it had the land or expected to buy it, instead of planning a route and then buying the land.
He also began negotiations with landowners, and his position was eliminated from the commission's budget after three years. His successor clashed with his superiors as well, and after he left in the commission relied on state DPW engineers for the rest of the construction. Most of the original parkway was surfaced in reinforced concrete. Officials favored it despite its higher initial cost as compared to asphalt since it was less likely to need repair over its year lifespan and reflected more light at night, improving safety.
When the parkway reached Columbia County, asphalt was used instead due to its lower cost by that time. Asphalt was also used for repaving of segments to the south; today the original concrete remains only between the US 44 and northern NY 82 exits.
From that point to the parkway's northern terminus, the asphalt is original. The changes in the design of the northern Taconic also reflect higher speeds that mid-century automobiles were capable of, and improvements in construction technology. The track-equipped steam shovels that broke ground for the first section in Putnam County in were the most advanced excavators of the time.
Over the next decade, the costs of moving a cubic yard dropped to almost half of what they had been in the early s. Later in the parkway's development, engineers began using aerial photographs to plan the route. The road's drainage system had some special features designed to avoid detracting from its scenic qualities. The roadway was crowned, with storm drain grates at the edge since there was no shoulder, to keep water from forming deep puddles that could cause accidents these have been eliminated from modernized sections of the parkway in Westchester.
The soft hand-fluted curbs also helped channel runoff to the basins, and in the median strips a central trench took water to underground pipes which drain into local streams.
The median strips themselves were not part of the original design on the lower sections of the Taconic, save for sections like Fahnestock State Park where designers used them to enhance the scenic capabilities of the road and create recreational opportunities. As the road was extended north during the s, it became clear that the wider medians improved safety without sacrificing beauty, and starting with the NY 52 exit in East Fishkill it was made a standard element of the parkway's design.
The Taconic came into being as a result due to the increasing presence of the automobile in American society and the demand for more public parks near crowded cities. In time a state authority would take over from them both, and then 18 years later itself yield up to its current administrator, the state Department of Transportation.
Roosevelt in to the opening of the last segment in , due in part to a lengthy hiatus resulting from World War II. Construction technology and highway design standards changed during the construction of the road, changes whose effect is still visible to drivers today. Since its completion it has been renovated, particularly in Dutchess and Westchester counties, reflecting the change in its role from park access route and scenic drive to important regional transportation artery.
Immigration and industrialization caused a major increase in New York City's population in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the summertime, many of these newer residents began looking for places to get away from the hot city and the densely populated tenements they lived in.
The city's own parks and beaches were often overcrowded. Automobiles became more affordable, and by there were more cars than horses in the city. Drivers began taking to low-quality roads in search of parks outside the city, but were often disappointed after long drives to find that most of those parks were closed to nonresidents.
In , New York and New Jersey had jointly acquired the Palisades, the cliffs along the west side of the Hudson in both states, to protect them from further damage due to quarrying. Making it a park for city residents to visit on hot summer weekends had not been part of the plan, but it quickly became one. Many residents could not get to it because of insufficient ferry capacity.
Its success as a park led to the establishment of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission and the construction of Palisades Interstate Parkway to allow nonstop drives through scenic and wooded areas through Palisades Park up to the Bear Mountain Bridge.
During his successful campaign for the State Senate in , Roosevelt had toured the district in a car, still not common in the area, the first candidate to do so.
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