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George Washington Memorial Parkway
Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C.
MOUNT VERNON MEMORIAL HIGHWAY
The first automobile tourists arrived at Mount Vernon in 1904, taking six hours to make the round trip from Washington. By the mid 1920s, Mount Vernon was inundated with motorists, who were forced to make their way through crowded commercial districts, over hazardous railroad crossings, around dangerous curves, and along narrow, poorly maintained roads. Billboards, gas stations and other unsightly developments lined U.S. Route 1, which served as the main approach to Mount Vernon.
Seeking to remedy these conditions in time for the nationwide celebration of the bicentennial of Washington's birth in 1932, Congress authorized the construction of Mount Vernon Memorial Highway in May 1928. The Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) was tasked with designing an attractive and efficient parkway that would accommodate the rapidly growing tourist and commuter traffic while preserving scenery, linking sites associated with Washington's life, and providing recreational opportunities along the Potomac shoreline.
Along with commemorating Washington and serving Mount Vernon-bound motorists, the BPR saw the project as an opportunity to demonstrate the principles of modern highway design. Together with New York's Bronx River Parkway, Mount Vernon Memorial Highway helped popularize such features as limited-access construction with widely spaced exits and entrances; overpasses to eliminate danger and congestion at major interchanges; broad, tree-lined right-of-ways to enhance safety and beauty; and careful integration of the roadway with the surrounding terrain to highlight attractive views and make driving safer, easier, and more appealing.
Old Mt. Vernon Road near Gum Springs, 1930 (NARA) |
AMERICA'S MOST MODERN MOTORWAY
When it was completed in January 1932, Mount Vernon Memorial Highway was widely praised as "America's Most Modern Motorway." Highway engineers, planners, and the popular press celebrated the parkway as the ultimate blend of modern engineering, landscape architecture, historic preservation, and patriotic sentiment.
Cloverleaf Fourteenth Street Bridge, 1932 (NARA) |
IMPROVED CIRCULATION
The original intersection at the south end of the Fourteenth Street Bridge was the first cloverleaf built by the federal government and one of the earliest in the United States. Cloverleafs were considered an important innovation because they enabled major roadways to cross without stop signs or dangerous left-hand turns. They were expensive to construct and required a great deal of land, so parkway designers experimented with a variety of simpler intersection layouts to improve safety and traffic flow.
Tear-drop shaped traffic islands, rotaries, and staggered entrances were used to "streamline" circulation at minor intersections, but extended merging lanes and broad continuous medians were not yet considered essential.
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