Boston's Emerald Necklace

The Emerald Necklace is one of many examples of large urban park systems that began springing up in the United States in the latter half of the 19th century. These parks were meant to offer city dwellers refuge from the crowds, noise, pollution, and disease that characterized urban life in the Victorian Era. The leading figure behind the creation of the Emerald Necklace was landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903). Olmsted, who had by then overseen the creation of famed Central Park in Manhattan, was enlisted by the Boston Parks Commission in the late 1870's to build not one but a string of parks and connecting parkways, connecting the existing Boston Common, Public Garden, and Commonwealth Avenue Mall into Boston's burgeoning outer neighborhoods, greatly expanding the amount of green space the city. While the Common dates to colonial times, the Garden and Mall were both recently constructed on new land fill, foreshadowing the much larger park building endeavor that Olmsted would undertake.

Initial work the parks continued until 1895, with Olmsted himself settling in neighboring Brookline to oversee the project. Construction involved land filling, rerouting sewage, clearing farmland, and of course the use of eminent domain (Bilis, 2018). The parks began to fall into disrepair through the 20th century, but by the 1960's and 70's a new wave of restoration efforts began, as did the formation of conservation groups like the Friends of the Public Garden in 1971 and the Emerald Necklace Conservancy in 1998.

All of the Emerald Necklace Parks remain intact today. Olmsted's home in Brookline has since become the  Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site , operated by the National Parks Service, and an invaluable resource for information on Olmsted's projects in Boston and throughout the United States. Most of the parkland is now owned and operated by the City of Boston, except for small portions that fall in the Town of Brookline, the windy parkways connecting many of the parks (owned and operated by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation), and the Arnold Arboretum. The Arboretum is a unique case, operated by Harvard University under a 1,000 year lease from the City of Boston, with which it splits maintenance responsibilities (Arnold Arboretum, n. d.).

Starting in downtown Boston, the tour will stop at each of the nine major parks of the Emerald Necklace, winding counterclockwise until ending at Franklin Park, in the center of the city.

I am not the only person to make a Story Map on the Emerald necklace, and so as a closing note I would like to point out a couple others for those who would like to learn more.

In "Constructing Nature: The Emerald Necklace", Candace Cocca provides her own overview of the Emerald Necklace, with a greater emphasis on ecology and public health, as well as the looming threat of climate change on the park system.

In "Finding Solitude in the Emerald Necklace", the Emerald Necklace Conservancy takes us on a more intimate tour of the parks, pointing out many of the more obscure but intriguing landmarks along the way.