The Riverway

Riverway, Job #00930, Boston, MA

Olmsted Archives

Quick Facts

Location:

Boston, MA

Significance:

Olmsted Designed Landscape

MANAGED BY:

Emerald Necklace Conservancy

The Riverway, which forms part of the border between Boston and Brookline, is a narrow park of approximately 34 acres that runs along the Muddy River as "a fresh-water course bordered by passages of rushy meadow and varied slopes..." While it looks like a natural landscape, this park was almost completely constructed, including over 100,000 plantings. It contains some of the most beautiful bridges within the Emerald Necklace, many designed by the successor architectural firm to Henry Hobson Richardson, the famed 19th-century architect and designed of Boston's Trinity Church in Copley Square. 

Source: "The Riverway," The Cultural Landscape Foundation

For more information and primary resources, please visit:
Olmsted Research Guide Online
Olmsted Archives on Flickr
Olmsted Online