Saint Joseph: a Beautiful Parkway System
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about St. Joseph, Missouri? Was it that St. Joseph has one of the best Parkway Systems in the United States of America? It probably wasn’t. The Parkway consists of 26 miles of parks and trails that go from Krug Park in the north all the way to Hyde Park in the south. The Parkway System was one of the first of it’s kind to be built in the United States.
The Parkway System was started in the early 1900s and designed to fit into the ‘City Beautiful Movement’ which combined beauty and function into architecture and urban planning. George Burnap, the architect credited with the design, was hired to finish the project In 1918. Burnap studied landscape architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell, and the University of Paris. He served as the landscape architect for the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds in Washington, D.C. and was involved in the design and redesign of many of the District’s most celebrated public spaces. He has also designed parks and park systems in Missouri, as well as Nebraska, New York, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina.
