Rockefeller's Palisades Gift Came With a Parkway
John D. Rockefeller Jr. is celebrated for millions of dollars in land and money donated to the park that saved the Palisades. Less well known is that he made the forty-two-mile-long Palisades Interstate Parkway, which runs the length of the park, a condition of that generosity.
As Lutz explains, Rockefeller Jr. was an ardent conservationist and also a firm believer in the automobile and its place in nature.
Rockefeller quietly organized a large land-buying program around Fort Lee and nearby New Jersey towns after construction of the George Washington Bridge set off a development frenzy, then gave the land to the commission.
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The parkway condition turns a conservation gift into a package deal: the landscape came with a road.
Not necessarily a contradiction. As Lutz explains, Rockefeller Jr. was an ardent conservationist and a firm believer in the automobile's place in nature.
It fits the era: the 1920s and 1930s were a golden age of park road building, with parkways conceived as scenic drives for cars only.