In landscaping , an avenue (from the French ), alameda (from the Portuguese and Spanish ), or allée (from the French), is a straight path or road with a line of trees or large shrubs running along each side, which is used, as its Latin source venire ("to come") indicates, to emphasize the "coming to," or arrival at a landscape or architectural feature. In most cases, the trees planted in an avenue will be all of the same species or cultivar , so as to give uniform appearance along the full length of the avenue.
21-579: The French term allée is used for avenues planted in parks and landscape gardens, as well as boulevards such as the Grande Allée in Quebec City , Canada, and Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin . The avenue is one of the oldest implements in the history of gardens . An Avenue of Sphinxes still leads to the tomb of the pharaoh Hatshepsut . Avenues similarly defined by guardian stone lions lead to
42-628: A large straight street in a city, often created as part of a large scheme of urban planning such as Baron Haussmann 's remodelling of Paris or the L'Enfant Plan for Washington D.C.; "avenues" will typically be the main roads. This pattern is very often followed in the United States, indeed all the Americas, but in the United Kingdom this sense is less strong and the name is used more randomly, mostly for suburban streets developed in
63-613: Is part of the A40 , a major road running in a north-westerly direction out of London. Western Avenue is approximately 10 miles (16 km) long from its junction with Old Oak Common Lane in East Acton . A notable landmark on Western Avenue at Perivale , near Greenford, is the Art Deco Hoover Building , now a Tesco supermarket and 66 homes. The road was first proposed in 1912 as a bypass of Uxbridge Road, part of
84-676: The A312 , 6.5 miles (10.5 km)), a junction for Heathrow Airport ; and the Polish War Memorial junction (with the A4180, 7.5 miles (12.1 km)) for RAF Northolt . In the final few miles of the road, there are minor junctions with the A437 (Hillingdon Circus) to Ruislip and Hillingdon , and with the B467 (Swakeleys Roundabout) to Uxbridge , before the road ends at the junction with
105-796: The Hanger Lane Gyratory System (with the A406 and A4005 , 2 miles (3.2 km)); this is followed by a junction with the ( B452 ) at Perivale (4 miles (6.4 km)), connecting southwards to West Ealing and the River Thames at Kew Bridge ; the Greenford Roundabout (with the A4127, 5 miles (8.0 km)), connecting northwards to Harrow and southwards to Southall ; the Target Roundabout (with
126-647: The M40 at the Denham Roundabout , northwest of Uxbridge. Western Avenue borders RAF Northolt in South Ruislip . On Tuesday 13 August 1996, in a very unusual accident, a Lear Jet landing at the airfield overshot the runway and ended up crashing into a van that just happened to be passing on the A40. The van driver was not seriously injured, despite being trapped for 40 minutes. It was later determined that
147-936: The Ming tombs in China. British archaeologists have adopted highly specific criteria for "avenues" within the context of British archaeology . In French formal garden Baroque landscape design style, avenues of trees that were centered upon the dwelling radiated across the landscape. See the avenues in the Gardens of Versailles or Het Loo . Other late 17th-century French and Dutch landscapes, in that intensely ordered and flat terrain, fell naturally into avenues; Meindert Hobbema , in The Avenue at Middelharnis (1689) presents such an avenue in farming country, neatly flanked at regular intervals by rows of young trees that have been rigorously limbed up; his central vanishing point mimics
168-544: The 20th century, though Western and Eastern Avenues in London are main traffic arteries out of the city, if not very straight. In cities which have a grid-based naming system , such as the borough of Manhattan in New York City , there may be a convention that the streets called avenues run parallel in one direction – roughly north–south in the case of Manhattan – while "streets" run at 90 degrees to them across
189-536: The A406. Then, during the 1980s and early 1990s, the road was expanded, and all the junctions west of Hanger Lane were improved. A flyover was built at the Greenford Roundabout to take Western Avenue over the A4127; the other junctions take Western Avenue under the crossing road. The last junction to be improved was Hillingdon Circus. Here, the work diverted Western Avenue to the north of the old line of
210-510: The American antebellum era South , the southern live oak was typically used, because the trees created a beautiful shade canopy . Sometimes tree avenues were designed to direct the eye toward some distinctive architectural building or feature, such as a chapels , gazebos , or architectural follies . Avenue as a street name in French, Spanish ( avenida ) and other languages implies
231-839: The Savoy cinema opened at the junction in 1931. East of this point is the Westway , part of the A40 Central London link to Paddington . After Savoy Circus, the dual carriageway takes a bend towards North Acton , crossing the North London line and the Great Western Main Line . The first major junction is Gypsy Corner (with the A4000, 0.8 miles (1.3 km)), connecting northwards to Park Royal and Harlesden and southwards to Acton town centre. Starting with
SECTION 10
#1732775352820252-694: The avenue's propensity to draw the spectator forwards along it. In Austria-Hungary , the fashion for establishing representative avenues appeared as early as the Renaissance and reached its peak in the Baroque period. Avenues lined the access roads to chateaus and manors, as well as pilgrimage routes and Stations of the Cross. The manorial landscape architecture was followed by "folk landscaping" with wayside chapels, crosses and shrines accompanied by trees. Later, Maria Theresa decreed in 1752 to plant trees along
273-539: The avenues; roughly east–west in Manhattan. In Washington, DC the avenues radiate from the centre running diagonally across the grid of streets, which follows typical French usage of the name (in France " boulevards " are often main roads running round the city centre). In Phoenix, Arizona , "the avenues" can colloquially mean "the west side of town", due to the numbered north–south-running roads being called "Avenues" in
294-489: The historic coaching road from London to Oxford. Construction began in 1921 and continued throughout the 1920s and 30s. It was completed to Denham in 1943. When first constructed, all intersections with other roads were flat junctions with roundabouts , resulting in significant congestion at busy periods . In the early 1960s, the Hanger Lane junction was improved, with an underpass built to take Western Avenue under
315-694: The line of former city walls . In North American usage, boulevards may be wide, multi-lane thoroughfares divided with only a central median. The word boulevard is borrowed from French . In France, it originally meant the flat surface of a rampart , and later a promenade taking the place of a demolished fortification. It is a borrowing from the Dutch word bolwerk ' bulwark '. Boulevards in Copenhagen : Western Avenue, London 51°31′30″N 0°16′16″W / 51.525°N 0.271°W / 51.525; -0.271 Western Avenue
336-420: The middle of the 19th century, when the construction of imperial roads continued, but at the same time a network of non-state side roads was created, the law ordered the planting of avenues along them, especially fruit trees and mulberries. Many baroque alleys have aged and been felled, and fruit tree alleys have become increasingly popular. At the time of the development of motoring, the oldest avenues often hinder
357-442: The new imperial roads for economic, aesthetic, orientation and safety reasons. Most avenues were created during the reigns of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, new landscaping came from England, and formal aesthetics were replaced by the aesthetics of the natural landscape. During Napoleonic wars, pyramidal poplars became a new element, popular due to their fast growth and distinctive shape. Also in
378-543: The road, taking it under both the A437 and the Uxbridge branch of the Metropolitan line ; Hillingdon London Underground Station was rebuilt as part of the work. Further expansion plans in the late 1990s resulted in the demolition of more than 100 houses along the eastern part of the road. However, these plans were ultimately never realised. Originally a roundabout, Western Circus became known as Savoy Circus, when
399-470: The street's size, importance, or function. Avenues were usually lined with trees when first built, although many avenues have lost their trees to make way for overhead wiring, parking or to allow light into properties. Boulevard A boulevard is a type of broad avenue planted with rows of trees, or in parts of North America , any urban highway or wide road in a commercial district. Boulevards were originally circumferential roads following
420-830: The western part of the city, separated from the eastern "Streets" by a "Central Avenue". Similarly, "the avenues" in San Francisco, California refers to the Richmond District and the Sunset District , the two neighborhoods on the Pacific coast, north and south of Golden Gate Park , respectively. In Anglophone urban or suburban settings, "avenue" is one of the usual suite of words used in street names, along with "boulevard", "circle", "court", "drive", "lane", "place", "road", "street", "terrace", "way", "gate" and so on, any of which may carry connotations as to
441-446: The widening and modernization of rural roads and are the subject of dispute between conservationists and traffic safety requirements. To enhance the approach to mansions or manor houses , avenues were planted along the entrance drive. Sometimes the avenues are in double rows on each side of a road. Trees preferred for avenues were selected for their height and speed of growth, such as poplar , beech , lime , and horse chestnut . In
SECTION 20
#1732775352820#819180