Activating Columbia Road: Reframing a Missing Link

The Emerald Necklace
Inspired by the example of Central Park in New York
City, the City of Boston set out to establish a series
of parks in the late 19th century. To accomplish
this, they turned to the planner of Central Park
himself, Frederick Law Olmsted, known as the
father of American landscape architecture.
Olmsted proceeded to construct a park system
for the Boston Park Commission between 1878 and
1895. The core of this network came to be known
as the Emerald Necklace, including five major
parks and four connecting parkways. Today, the
Emerald Necklace winds through the city of Boston
and parts of Brookline from the Back Bay through
Jamaica Plain, Roxbury and into Dorchester. 1
In an 1897 plan to continue the park system,
Olmsted envisioned that Columbia Road would
be a greenway. This proposed greenway would
connect Franklin Park, a key part of the Emerald
Necklace, to the Boston Harbor, one of Boston’s
greatest natural assets. Like the other connecting
parkways, it would serve as a link in the larger
Emerald Necklace network. 2
This vision was never realized. Unlike the other
parkways, Columbia Road was an existing street,
with quickly expanding commercial activities and
traffic needs. Although it was widened in 1897, it
still lacked the road space needed to become a
true greenway and was instead designed similarly
to Blue Hill Avenue, with a streetcar line in the
center. 3,4
1 Zaitzevsky, Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Park System.
2 Zaitzevsky, Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Park System.
3 Ibid.
4 Historic Boston Incorporated, “Commercial Casebook:
Upham’s Corner.”
Figure 1: Plan of the Emerald Necklace, 1894
Figure 2: The 1897 Plan of Columbia Road
Activating Columbia Road: Reframing a Missing Link
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