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In urban design, a terminating vista is a building or monument that stands at the end or in the middle of a road, so that when one is looking up the street the view ends with the site.
Terminating vistas are considered an important method of adding aesthetic appeal to a city, and to emphasize important structures or monuments. Common terminating vistas include government buildings, war memorials, courthouses and other important structures. Standing at the end of a street adds grandeur to a structure, and legislature and palaces are thus often placed in such a locale. Also, especially on east–west streets, terminating vistas provide sunshade for pedestrians.
A notable disadvantage of terminating vistas is that they make traffic more complicated and prevent a simple grid system of city blocks. To accommodate them, large traffic circles or other techniques have to be employed to manage traffic around the monument. Cities on a grid system such as New York City thus have few terminating vistas. A prominent NYC exception is the controversial MetLife Building, which was built on top of Park Avenue.
A city particularly known for its terminating vistas is Paris, where many of the largest streets end in monuments and structures such as the Arc de Triomphe, Palais Garnier or the Panthéon. Another well-known example is Washington, D.C., where, most notably, the United States Capitol provides the terminating vista for North, South, and East Capitol Streets, as well as the National Mall and either side of Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania Avenues (which are all bisected by the Capitol, turning into pedestrian walkways around the edifice). [1] Other notable terminating vistas include Buckingham Palace, located at the end of The Mall, and St. Peter's Square, at the end of Via della Conciliazione.
Philadelphia's City Hall is another example, [2] situated on Penn Square where Broad and Market Streets intersect. The two streets form the north–south and east–west axes of the city's core grid, leaving the large masonry structure visible from all sections of the city.
An unusual situation exists on Bay Street in Toronto, where the clock tower of Old City Hall lies at the northern end of the segment south of Queen Street West. However, Bay Street is a through street that curves to the west, intersecting Queen Street West at a 45-degree angle before curving back north along the western edge of Old City Hall and continuing towards Davenport Road. In a similar manner, the Thomson Building and Munich Re Centre office towers act as a vista for the northern section of Bay Street heading south.
State Route 275 is an unsigned state highway connecting West Sacramento, California and Downtown Sacramento. Since 1996, the highway has been legally defined to be the length of the Tower Bridge crossing the Sacramento River. Prior to that year, SR 275 was also known as the West Sacramento Freeway, and was a short spur connecting Interstate 80 Business / U.S. Route 50 in West Sacramento, and the Tower Bridge. SR 275 also extended east into Sacramento along the Capitol Mall from the bridge to 9th Street, just west of the California State Capitol. West Sacramento completed a project to replace the freeway with a pedestrian-friendly street named Tower Bridge Gateway.
Front Street is an east–west road in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. First laid out in 1796, the street is one of the original streets of the Town of York. The street was laid out along the shoreline of Lake Ontario as it existed during that time. It remains an important street, with many important uses located along it, including the St. Lawrence Market, Meridian Hall, Union Station and the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The eastern section of Front Street, in the West Don Lands, east of Cherry Street, is being rebuilt as a broad tree-lined boulevard, intended to be the pedestrian-friendly commercial spine of the new neighbourhood.
Macapagal Boulevard, also known as President Diosdado Macapagal Boulevard and Macapagal Avenue, is an eight-lane road in Metro Manila, Philippines, running parallel to Roxas Boulevard from the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex in Pasay to Asia World City in Parañaque. It was named after former Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal. This road has three major bridges, crossing the 'channels', of which the largest is the Libertad Channel, where the Libertad Water Pumping Station is situated. Thanks to intersection reconfiguring around EDSA to relieve traffic, Macapagal Boulevard is now often used to access the SM Mall of Asia to the north and Cavite to the south. It is also the main major road in Metro Manila's reclamation area called Bay City.
St. Laurent Boulevard is an arterial road in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Beginning at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police college complex at Sandridge Road in the Manor Park neighbourhood, St. Laurent Boulevard runs in a straight line, slightly east of south, until it reaches Walkley Road. It then curves west and intersects with Conroy Road and Don Reid Drive. In Ottawa, the name of the street is pronounced exclusively in French, even among Anglophones, as it honours former Canadian Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. Prior to 1951, it was known as Base Line Road.
Solano Avenue in Berkeley and Albany, California is a two-mile (3.2 km) long east-west street. Solano Avenue is one of the larger shopping districts in the Berkeley area. Businesses along Solano Avenue cover a wide range, including grocery stores, coffee shops, drugstores, bookstores, antique dealers, apparel outlets, ethnic restaurants and a movie theater.
Charles Street, known for most of its route as Maryland Route 139, runs through Baltimore and the Towson area of Baltimore County. On the north end it terminates at an intersection with Bellona Avenue near Interstate 695 (I-695) and at the south end it terminates in Federal Hill in Baltimore. Charles Street is one of the major routes through the city of Baltimore, and is a major public transportation corridor. For the one-way portions of Charles Street, the street is functionally complemented by the parallel St. Paul Street, Maryland Avenue, Cathedral Street, and Liberty Street.
The McMillan Plan is a comprehensive planning document for the development of the monumental core and the park system of Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was written in 1902 by the Senate Park Commission. The commission is popularly known as the McMillan Commission after its chairman, Senator James McMillan of Michigan.
Downtown Edmonton is the central business district of Edmonton, Alberta. Located at the geographical centre of the city, the downtown area is bounded by 109 Street to the west, 105 Avenue to the north, 97 Street to the east, 97 Avenue and Rossdale Road to the south, and the North Saskatchewan River to the southeast.
U.S. Route 27 (US 27) in Florida is a north–south United States Highway. It runs 496 miles (798 km) from the South Florida Metropolitan Area northwest to the Tallahassee Metropolitan Statistical Area. Throughout the state, US 27 has been designated the Claude Pepper Memorial Highway by the Florida Legislature. It was named after long-time Florida statesman Claude Pepper, who served in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The stretch running from Miami to South Bay was originally designated the Thomas E. Will Memorial Highway by the Florida Legislature in 1937 when that portion was known as Florida State Road 26. Will, the founder of Okeelanta, Florida, had worked for almost twenty years to get the state to build a road from Miami to the area south of Lake Okeechobee. For most of its length in the state, US 27 is a divided highway.
King Street is a Lower City arterial road in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, also known as Highway 8. The western-end starts off beside McMaster University Medical Centre as a two-way street and passes through Westdale. At Paradise Road, King Street switches over to a one-way street (westbound) right through the city's core up to "the Delta", a spot in town where King and Main streets intersect. From the Delta onwards, King Street then switches over to become a two-way street again and ends at Highway 8 in Stoney Creek.
There are 21 routes assigned to the "G" zone of the California Route Marker Program, which designates county routes in California. The "G" zone includes county highways in Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz counties.
Main Street is the most important commercial street in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States though it also extends south into the cities of South Salt Lake, Millcreek, and Murray. Its commercial importance is almost totally derived from the few blocks of the street which are immediately south of Temple Square that have attracted banks, major retailers, and heavy foot traffic throughout Salt Lake City's history; the long southern extension of Main Street south of about 500 and 600 South, in contrast, is always in the shadow of State Street, which is more designed for the long-distance automobile traffic that is common away from downtown.
State Street is a wide 17.3-mile-long (27.8 km) street in Salt Lake County, Utah leading almost straight south from the steps of the Utah State Capitol Building, through Salt Lake City, South Salt Lake, Millcreek, Murray, eastern Midvale, Sandy, and northwestern Draper. Because it follows the most direct route from downtown Salt Lake City to the Point of the Mountain pass to Utah County, it was the undisputed main road south from Salt Lake City until Interstate 15 (I-15) was built to the west. It retains the U.S. Highway 89 designation for all but the northernmost seven blocks despite I-15's proximity. Due to its history as a route for long-distance travel, travel within the Wasatch Front region, and travel between the cities along the east side of the Jordan River, it has attracted a wide variety of retail and service businesses along its entire length, creating a nearly continuous commercial axis for the Salt Lake Valley.
Meralco Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare located in Ortigas Center in Pasig, Metro Manila, Philippines. It links Ortigas Avenue in the north and Shaw Boulevard in the south and borders the western edge of Valle Verde in Ugong. It is named for the Manila Electric Company, also known as Meralco, which is headquartered on the avenue's junction with Ortigas Avenue. Other notable businesses on Meralco Avenue include UnionBank Plaza, Marco Polo Ortigas Manila, Ayala Malls The 30th, Metrowalk, and the mixed-use development called Capitol Commons at the former Rizal Provincial Capitol lot on Meralco and Shaw Boulevard.
Denny Way is an east–west arterial street in downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. It forms the northern end of the Belltown street grid as well as the boundaries of Belltown, Lower Queen Anne, South Lake Union, Denny Triangle, and Cascade. The street continues east through Capitol Hill to Madrona as a minor neighborhood street, ending near Madrona Park on Lake Washington.
Pine Street is a major east–west street in Seattle, Washington, United States. It travels parallel to Pike Street between Downtown Seattle and the retail core to Capitol Hill, the Central District, and Madrona.
Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, has a unique and diverse architectural history. Encompassing government, monumental, commercial, and residential buildings, D.C. is home to some of the country's most famous and popular structures designed by some of the leading architects of their time. The popularity of Washington's buildings is evident by the fact that a 2007 poll of Americans by the American Institute of Architects found that six of the top 10 most popular U.S. structures were located in Washington, D.C. Overall, 17 of the top 150 most popular structures were located in the capital.
