Before 2012 there was no walking from Uptown to the Arts District. The Woodall Rodgers Freeway sat in a trench between them, six lanes wide, and the two bridges at Olive and Pearl were full-sun crossings that nobody used in summer. Klyde Warren Park changed the geometry. The deck spans five city blocks, planted with eighty-foot live oaks and a sloped allée of crape myrtles, and the cover is dense enough by now that the park reads as one of the shadier square acres in the city center.
The picks below all use the park as a shade bridge. The best stretch is the Olive Street edge, where the canopy stitches into the building shadow of the Trammell Crow Center on hot afternoons. The food-truck plaza on the east side is open to the sun and not part of the route. The Children’s Park is the densest cover, but it is the loudest, so we usually skirt it.