Utica Parks & Parkway System Timeline | Central New York Conservancy | Mohawk Valley | Utica New York | Olmsted | Proctor Park | Memorial Parkway

Utica Parks and Parkway System Timeline

Why would private citizens have voluntarily invested so much of their own money and effort creating a park system for Utica that is nearly 70 percent the size of Central Park in Manhattan, a city 26 times more populous than Utica? And how have people used and treated this great gift over the course of a century and more?

This ten-part illustrated series offers an overview of local and national trends that inspired the Proctor family to create Utica's park and parkway system and to hire Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., the leading landscape architect of the first half of the twentieth century, to design this system. It also discusses how people used this system since in its early days--the social and cultural events they attended in the parks and the sports they played there--and how and why the system changed over time.

The Central New York Conservancy would like to thank the following for permitting us to use illustrations in the production of this series: The Oneida County History Center; the Utica City Department of Engineering; Mark Kelly; Kirk Evans; Phil Bean