Monument Ave a top 10 street. We already knew that.
The American Planning Association placed Richmond’s own Monument Avenue among the top 10 streets in the nation. Monument Ave joins thoroughfares like Miami’s Ocean Drive and Michigan Ave in Chicago.
Read the APA’s writeup on Monument Ave here.
Many may regard this news as, well, of the shruggable variety. Still, I think many Richmonders may take Monument and its tributary and anciallary streets and ways for granted.
If one has traveled a bit, to other larger cities here and abroad, one comes to recognize that Monument Avenue is quite unlike most other places.
Friend of mine told me once that he thought Monument was more beautiful than the Champs Elysées in Paris. I pished poshed him, but since then, I’ve had opportunity to visit and walk along it on several occasions.
In the recent decades the Parisian avenue has gotten junked up with fast food restaurants and the like. For all the French bluster about how they hate the commodification of their culture and the homogenization of everything, they sure don’t mind letting the ugliness of suburbia creep into their sacred precincts, and they eat more quick-order hamburgers than any other nation in Europe.
Monument is almost all residential, and retains a holistic character — say what you will about those bearded and booted men mounted on warrior horses. You won’t see a MickeyDees opening up at Monument and Boulevard.
Now if we could only get roundabouts at all the monuments!