Indianapolis Historic Park and Boulevard National Register Listing

Strategies

As we studied the historic park and boulevard plan, we realized the visionary genius of George Kessler and how relevant his work was to contemporary planning and design work, including:

• Healthy lifestyles: The Kessler parkways and boulevards were designed for two types of travel. The wide curvilinear, tree-lined driving lanes and separated, tree-lined pedestrian promenades. The experience of the route, including views to natural features, open, green spaces and groupings of trees and shrubs, rather than efficient and direct point-to-point travel is the character of the historic parkway.
• Increased property values: Beauty is important. "Careful attention should be given to the park beauty, and sanitation to present the most attractive condition for the building of new homes."
• Efficiency: “The result of a properly designed system of parks and parkways . . . is not only of practical benefit . . . but becomes an economic feature in that it encourages the use of otherwise waste spaces and consolidates the work of those departments devoted to street building, maintenance and sewering, etc."
• Creative financing: Kessler divided the city into four quadrants as separate taxing districts to fund each quadrant’s parks, parkways, and boulevards. The north side of the city was much more aggressive in funding and building their section.
• Social interaction: alternative transportation systems provide infrastructure that encourages social interaction.

In 1907 the Commercial Club of Indianapolis, the precursor to the Chamber of Commerce, knew their city needed to become more competitive. Many peer cities were following the tenets of the City Beautiful movement, which was exemplified during the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. After a nation-wide search the club hired George Kessler, who became the City Landscape Architect for 16 years until his death in 1923. At that time the City Landscape Architect was responsible for both the park and street system, and they were managed together as one system. Indianapolis faces many of these same challenges and imperatives today.

Places

Kessler’s comprehensive city plan sought to regulate urban growth and improve the quality of life for its citizens. Focused on the old city limits of 38th / Emerson / Southern / and Tibbs, Kessler’s vision, as stated in his first report to the Park Board, was to establish a: “continuous park that is brought to the doors of all sections of the community. . ." Parkways followed the creeks, and boulevards were wide tree-lined right-of-ways that linked the parkways. Unique features included shade trees planted to separate the pedestrian from the vehicular driving lanes, uniform building setbacks, special street lighting, in-pavement tiles with street names in the sidewalks, and beautiful beaux-arts features like the bridges and other structures - creating the City as a Place.

Connections

The parkways became the basis for city growth within the old city limits by extending dedicated park space, flood control structures and pedestrian and vehicular circulation as an integrated system to form, as he stated in a park board report: “an attractive means of building up and tying together the otherwise isolated residence districts which have sprung up along the early lines of traffic.”

In today’s words, Kessler’s plan served the multiple purposes of transportation, recreation, flood control, conserving the natural environment and economic growth. His plan proposed that a world-class park system is the cornerstone of quality-of-life based economic development.