[*3]
Frederick Law Olmsted        SUBJECT FILE        Parks        Boston, Mass.
                                                                                                  General   UndatedWhen the question of providing 
for New York some means 
[by] of escape for a few hours 
from the confined space and 
the newlly artificial scenes
and the noise and disquiet 
without a long 
journey into the country began 
as discussed, [the conf] 
constant reference was made 
as we have observed to this experience 
of London and of other 
large European towns.  An experience 
made possible in 
them, it must be observed 
not in any great degree because 
the opportunity had -The experience thus to be 
studied in London and in
Paris and in several other large 
and growing towns


been wisely [planned] secured
in advance, but because advantage
had been taken of
an opportunity occurring
accidentally. [No] Many
of these old country public
parks., not having been
planned for the use [to]
which had become most
important, had been used
for other purposes.  They contained, 
for example, in some
cases, palaces, [private villas and] churches
[barracks,] private residencies, powder magazines,
barracks, parade grounds
and stables.could not, [simply] because, [of] if for no other reason, none of
them were of such breadth and so situated 
that people [ever] could not find escape
in them from the sense of living surrounded
and confined by buildings,
[oppressed by artifi] from the bustle
[as] of the streets and from the oppression
[of artificialities] of scenes of artificial
character.

[Several matters must soon come before
you provide consideration of which
will raise questions of]


     [Several pending matters [will soon]
raise question of the purposes and 
functions of your Board, the [of ]
[the proper] limits if its field a duty
and of the division of its responsibility from many other public bodies. 
As, with reference to some of 
these matters instructed we have already been called 
upon to prepare drawings and to 
[give] professional advice, we think 
it best to submit the following observations. 
If your Board should take a different view from that which we shall present it will be desirable
that we should be advised accordingly before further advancing the projects and 
plans that we have in hand.
reopen the general question.  
We have been at different times and places
In an official relations with 
twenty boards of other Park Commissions we have 
Each of them has caused disappointment 
and anger by declining to enter
In every case a wide and irreconcilable 
difference of opinion has 
been manifest as to the nature 
of the ascetics? of the Commission.
and often had occasion to observe that the committee have taken 
the course taken by them]

for hunting.  As has been said 
[There will] There were still deer roaming 
even in Hyde Park, [and] 
the property was [now] nominally 
private property and under the management
and control of a resident keeper 
of the deer.  But for generations the 
people of London had been admitted 
to it and roads and walks had been 
made in for their use.  And the
use which they mainly made of it was
such as to precisely serve the
purpose required; namely that of 
supplying what the hundreds of 
small squares and places and commons, 
playgrounds and gardens of London [do
& surrounded as they certainly there with conspicuous
buildings and confined 
could not supply because they were none of 
them of [sufficient extent to altar] 
such extent and so situated that people
within which would not still find them confines.]circumstances [thoughtfulness] [and foreseeing]
forecasting men looking not to the [immediate
so much as to the distant
future, [and] though led on by nothing

[like a general public demand
such as not popular demand,
began an agitation]

like a popular demand, began to 
consider how the evil of such 
a state of things could by timely
provision be [a formulated or] mitigated.
When the subject came 
to be publicly discussed, constant
reference was made by
those advocating action in the
premises to the parks of London.
There were then in London no
places called parks except spaces of ground
that had [been] formerly been parks
in the old legal sense of preserves[What is there purpose? The laws
establishing park commissions in no
single instance give a full clear and
unambiguous definition of it. (Must be
looked for in the circumstances.) Commonly
the preamble to the acts [on] reads an
act to provide for public parks," [in]
and not where in the body of the 
act is a more definite statement of its
[int] purpose to be found.
     What then is the eye of the law
is a park?]


	¶ Henceforth the most populous 
of American towns, was
also forty year ago most unfavorably situated 
[in this respect] with respect to to the confinement of its people, because 
nearly surrounded by broad
water, and it was [perfectly]
[evident] more evident in
New York than any where else
that if the city continued to
prosper and [its building to] stretch
out, and its opposite shores to
be filled up, [with buildings]
a time was approaching when
to the mass of its people may
escape from the confinement of
buildings and streets would be
impossible. Under these in-The same principle applies to roads,
walks, fences and all other [necessary]
constructions [to be] of a park that must be recognized as artificial.
[They] Where things are not of the essence of the park
They are means to [a pr] the [intended??] 
use of that which is its essence, namely its
[use of it] [It is not desirable when] 
scenery. It is not desirable that
they should be unnecessarily [brought]
brought under view. It is most undesirable 
that they should [cross] [quiet] appear as streaks [across]
or dead spots upon quiet
plains or slopes of queensward. The art of
park making includes the art of so laying them out that they
may serve their subordinate purpose without nullifying the leading purpose.
As to places for games or for any
form of athletic exercises or amusements,
having signed to this understanding of the purpose of a park,
they can be made within a park [consistently with its] [purpose] [justifying][purpose] 
only to such extent and in such
localities as they may be without [injury] 
[to the] [lessening its charm] coming in conflict
with its only justifying purpose, that of providing,
near at hand, for the future of the city, such degree
as is practicable of the charm of rural scenery.
[by aims that involve] [Have] [the distinction]
[of verdancy in the best of expances [mead??]

A park upon this view of its
purpose must be laid out with
regard to those coming to it from [a]
[distance] distant parts of the  city
and for those coming [within it]
[not for those] into it; not to those looking 
from buildings on its border. If its
scenery is laid open to those on its border [there], then the 
buildings on its border must be laid open to the view of [from]  
those within it, [whose object is to escape]
It is the object of the park to
[(see ?)] give those within it escape from the sight of
buildings, except in so far as buildings [so far as] [except such as][in so far as buildings] 
[such as] are absolutely necessary to their own
x comfortable use of [it] the park. [with which will]
[desirably, as a wall, be in a great degree]
[secluded.]

[The object of roads and walks and
buildings in a park]The scenery of a park of a park is 
to be enjoyed [from] by people coming within its boundaries 
[not from without] not from those in buildings 
without


To make the scenery of a park
To the P.C. of B

A variety of projects [and propositions] 
are soon to come before your Board, 
some growing as details out of designs heretofore 
[comprehensively] intertwined, others from 
suggestions of [members] Commissioners, 
[of the city commit] of the mayor and City 
Council or from the representations and petitions 
of citizens.  

It is [not] desirable that they should [not] be 
considered, not simply as [so many] each an independent 
proposition but [as all as elements] as so many constituents of a 
comprehensive scheme looking to the
lasting requirements of the future city 
of Boston.  



Boston
Beginning of letter to 
Park Com. on the 
duties of Park Com.

IV

MTo the P.C. of B

     [Taking this view]
     The primary, [and] most distinctive and essential
duty of the Commission is to secure
to the people of Boston  [of the city] [of Boston] and more especially
to those of them whose lives would otherwise be most confined
[as a measure] as a means of [health]
[invigorating health] counteracting the depressing
effects upon health of [a] confined artificial conditions
of life, [means of] opportunity of obtaining
inexpensively the tonic effect on mind
and body of a broad expanses of free natural
scenery. [This is an object] It is common to
confuse this object with that [of proper to gardens]
[namely that] of providing [for the]
such means of pleasure as are formed in collections
of flowers and other objects of gardening
in the older and stricter use of the word.
The Park Commission was unnecessary and would never have been
constituted for such a [proper] gardening
purpose and its right to [use its funds]
take lands and use its funds for it is at
least questionable. The right to use its
funds for structures and buildings and objects
[of art] of interest in the field of art or 
otherwise, except as the object is then firsthand of increasing
the [ca] ease, scenery, convenience
and comfort with which large bodies
of citizens may be brought under the influence
of spacious natural scenery.As a view [is] has often been taken of the 
operations of the Commission widely
[different from this] inconsistent
with [that] the theory of its policy then stated [m it may]
the assertion may here be recorded 
[be best to assert] that such [different]
[  must] a view is sustained
by no action hitherto [not] taken by the Commission
under any of its successive administrations.

Examination of T. P. __ Fens - Marine-
Wood Isld - Charlesbank, arboretum. Jamaica, Parkways-
(Men who over [would] history of ground
[for] on the ground want local properties and
be improved & etc - are wrong)
But playgrounds & gymnasia -as a widely different increase need [of the]
not only of the function

Franklin Park, Boston
Functions of Park Com.
Building of ordinary traffic
streets not a function.
Kind of attractions to be provided
for in parks.
mere attracting of crowds not a
province of park commission.Franklin Park ?

disappear if our reflection
could be given to the
consideration that provisions 
of the laws under
which Park Commissions 
operate would not [be]
[made] have been enacted as exhaustively as
they have been in the United
States for purposes which
could be realized through the
previously existing machinery
of city government.
~
8eration was given to the

Park Commissions are a
comparatively new element 
in public affairs; their functions
are not well defined in
the acts providing for them; the
terms used in these acts being
[being ambiguous and liable] [and] open to very
[to be inf] [to be understood in
different ways. A sound] different constructions. It thus often occurs that a sound
judgment on [the] questions [thus] so
[ar] arising can [often only] be
[formed with] formed only after [consideration 
In of] reflection upon conditions not
accurately specified in the terms of the
acts. Of these conditions the

[*have the*]
9[are authorized to make law
and to cause citizens to be
sent to jail for breaking
them; to establish a police
force of their own, and 
in various ways.]

most important is that
Park Commission cannot have [have not]
been instituted with a
view to supercede [provisions]
means of serving the public
that were previously in existence.
They [are] have not
been intended, for example, to provide
[a] towns with roads or 
streets for the ordinary 
purposes of roads or streets.
[They have not been intended
to]
10[respect and to indicate the general
grounds of them, in order
that we may be set right if
found in error.]

it being obvious that if they had previously existing provisions for this purpose
[If they had, street Departments]
would upon the introduction of Park Commissions, have been [at 
the same time abolished] rescinded or 
restricted in their functions as they have not been. 

If Park Commissions lay out 
[public highways [it must have 
be if] [but] they must do so 
for some [special] purpose other 
than that proper to a street Department [with which a Street
streets were laid out before they
were instituted], and this purpose
must be one for the benefit
of the public at large, not
for the benefit of [private interests].
[Ifor] The the private interests of a
certain number of [cut] citizens.]
11highways these highways must [be 
public highways it must be 
for a purpose and the highways 
laid out by them must be] 
[curbed] then be planned and contrived 
[with adaptation to a purpose] to serve some purpose 
[a] radically differing from 
the purpose of ordering streets 
If they are [also] to serve the purpose of 
ordering streets, [they must do so do] this must be 
[so intended to [?] do so] not from a primary intention
that they shall do so but
because they are adapted
to do so incidentally to
their originating purpose.
12

[So] Again, it is obvious that a 
[a] public ground [in a city] cannot
rightly be established [that is in a city] that is so large, so extended 
and so regulated, that vehicles
[are] will be compelled to go far out
of their way to get by it, thus
adding seriously to 
[as which it now forms so
serious will then add seriously to the]
the cost of the traffic of a city,
unless the object of establishing it is one of
[unless for a purpose of much]
urgent importance [that] and which can
not be provided for on a 
smaller ground or a series
of smaller grounds.

[One of the assum]
13Yet the first important
work of every Park Commission
[has been to] has looked to 
the establishment of a public
ground several hundred acres
in extent by which

14

[the Bost Park Commissions
have frequently established
public grounds by which]
ordinary street traffic [will be] [would be]
is to be
interrupted for a distance of
a mile or more., [and where] In several cases  
where such grounds were established
twenty to thirty years ago 
in districts that were [then]
then rural neighborhoods,
[they are now in several cas]
their burdens are already [now in several
cases whe], densely occupied by
buildings for residence [or]
and trade.

15Such a proceeding [can] is to be justifiable
only on the presumption that
[This is all wrong unless]
these grounds [are in abl] in question are to be
strictly adapted in all their 
design and management to
serve a public purpose not
[wh] to be served [as well] as well
[on a small if at all] if to be at all served on smaller grounds.

It is often assumed in public
discussions that the chief
value of a park [is that of] lies in the circumstance
[giving] that it gives the people of a large
town the opportunity of breathing
better air than they otherwise
[could] would -- and to this
[assumption the corrolorary]
16

assumption an assumed corrolary
often hangs that [pro] 
so long as [they] parks serve [this] the
purpose of airing places it is of minor
importance what other purposes they are well
contrived to serve.
[of airing places
it is not of vital consequence
how they are laid out and managed.]

But
[as a matter of fact none
of our Park Commissions has
ever selected a site for a 
larger park because of its advantages 
for this purpose]
as a matter of fact sites
for large parks have always
been selected by [our] the Commissions
charged with the duty from regard to quite
[very dif very different]
17[other reasons than their fit
suitability to serve as ventilating
places for a city ventilators that  not
an dollar out of every]

assumption an assumed corrolary
often hangs that [pes]
so long as [they] parks serve [this] the
purpose 

[of airing places
it is not of value consequence
how they are laid out and managed. But
as a matter of fact none
of our park Commissions has
ever selected a site for a
large park because of its advantages
for this purpose.]
 
of airing places it is of minor
importance what other purposes they are well
contrived to serve. 

But
as a matter of fact sites
for large parks have always
been selected by [our] the Commissions
charged with the duty from regard to quite
[very dif very different]
17often appear

[Were had a special commission to
be formed been formed in Boston at the time this Park Commission was formed to secure
it would not begin its work
by taking 500 acres of land
by reserving 500 acres of land
from building all in one body
and that in one of its more
open suburbs. It would rather have suggested]

If at the time the Park Commission was [formed] organized a
[special] Commission had been formed in Boston to secure 
better provisions of air for its people,
its first business would have been to
find means [of preventing] to prevent the fouling of
air in the midst of the town by the smoke of [qunt]
factories; [in the heart of the town;
town; to prevent] to restrict the
height of buildings on narrow
streets, to secure the widening
straightening and extention of
[streets with] streets by which
means copious currents of air would be
allowed to sweep from water side[teries, & where]

differences of [openess] inegant upon them
have bred irritations and
prejudices and led to efforts to af-

[ulous quarters and by
adding to the number
rather than the size of
[open spaces] open places,
squares, commons
and gardens of restricted areas.Taking up]

Again taking up the problem of [ventilating
a town securing] giving
the people of Boston better
air in a business-like
way, no man would contend
that [the best] an intelligent solution
of it was to be found
in preparing such a place as
Franklin Park or by such
crooked, winding, up and down, thoroughfares
as air con-contemplated in [the] recent
purchases of land by [the] your
Commission for park-ways.
The Philadelphia Park Commission would not have taken 3000 acres of land
far out in the suburbs of the city, through the midst of which [ran] already ran a
broad river and a [?] volume of fresh air. New York and Chicago would not have
found parks on water sides already perfectly open to air [from f] [?ing] from larger
bodies of water.
Another [mistaken]
egregiously mistaken assumption
[that] often appears
in phrases implying that
anything is desirable that
will make a park more
pleasing, attractive
and popular. Half the
money that has been already
expended on Franklin Park could
have been easily so used as
[to make it to bring ten times the
to make it more all ? and to bring to it
number of visitors to that as have
have drawn to it.]

to make it much more
attractive than it is or ever
[will be] can be made under
the adopted design for it;
could have been easily so used
that ten times as many 
[visitors would as yet
have been to been]
visitors would have been
drawn to it as yet have
been.
[Nor can it be consistently]
Again, it is often assumed
that the [object] purpose for
which a Park Commission
is constituted is to provide
[opportunity for recreation]
the people of a city with
recreation and that anything
introduced into the plan of
a park must be considered
desirable that adds to its
recreative qualities. It must
be easy at slight cost to
double the recreative [attractions] qualities
 of every park in the country.
When the law providing for [custom of
hanging] leaving the bodies
of certain offenders hanged

in chains by the side of
suburban roads [highways] roads in England
was proposed to be
abolished, memorials
were presented and urged
in Parliament remonstrating
against the measure
on the ground that it was
a recreation to citizens [as]
to go out [and] from time to time to see their bodies
as they gradually rotted
away [and] To the reply
that such a form of recreation
was not elevation [it] the
rejoinder was probably [replied] made that the
[walk out of town to and from
the gibbets to which people were led
by their desire to see them was favorable
to their health]
[*24*]walk out of town which
people were led to take
by their interest in the
uncanny [sight] spectacle was 
favorable to their health.
[*Time fleeting as to loan*] 
[There is but one
purpose that will justify]
The laws under which
Park Commissions have proceeded, 
and the more conspicuous
and costly measures
that they have taken are
to be justified only upon the
ground that a purpose has
been entrusted to their intelligence
that could [not] bewalk out of town to which 
people were [has had]
led


Boston?

Attitude of Park Com. on the
introduction of extraneous objects 
into the park.

Some limit of the uses of a 
park necessary as precedent 
sets no limit.

Parks limited to recreation by act but 
recreation may have a large
personal bias.

Recreation a matter of fashion
Difficulty of drawing the line for 
letting in special amusements on the
score of morality, popularity

26[?] of [?]
for which any [pretence] greed of presumption can
be [made] found that they would
be of service to the public - [a 
volume would not be sufficient for]
we could fill a hundred pages with 
an enumeration 
of the objects for which [worthy
men have] it has been sought to [obtain]
in some way obtain admirers
from park commissioners, 
and with regard to which it would not 
 [nor would it] be possible 
to state any rule or principle 
under which it can 
have been right to yield 
to some and to deny others.
[The consequence is that any]

27

[park commission is under 
importuned
pressure to aid, generally
in some indirect way, all 
manner of projects; many]
of such projects a part are
benevolent and patriotic;
[many] a part selfish and base,
many are mere hobbies of 
taste of cultivated minds, many more
[uncultivated and un] 
hobbies of uncultivated and undisciplined 
minds. [The
same park has at different 
periods been under
the direction of [different] successive
commissioners, those of one 
period objecting to objects 
that have been entertained by their predecessors [another]]

28[The] A necessity [of adopting thus arising for]
will thus be evident for adopting
same principle or theory
by which a limit to what
shall be undertaken in
a park may be fixed.
[will thus be evident.]
But there is a quarter
necessity for doing so in the
fact that the composition of Park Commissions,
must from time to time be changed, and that newly
appointed park commissioners
[may at any time come in
who are representative of the]The necessity of adapting 
some principle or theory of the 
purpose of a park that will 
not give equal rights to 

may be
bent upon accomplishing objects
that cannot be accomplished 
without a 
waste of much that has 
been done by their predecessors. 
The lack of any 
fixed principle of limitation 
in the minds of newly appointed 
park commissioners 
has, in fact, led in several
instances, to very serious 
waste in this way.

30

[*may come in to where
the main purpose of their*]may have objects

strongly possesed

[be strongly purposed to undo 
diligently and
at great expense to undo 
what had been done by them [for] 
[them] predecessors.]
¶ If a Commission is to
be governed by custom, precedents
may be found for
the introduction [for example] with public
parks of churches, [and] hospitals,
theatres, [and] ball rooms,
museums, club houses and
even of private residences;
for the most hideous of
monuments and statues;
[and for the most childish of
shows and the most debasing
of [?minatures.]
31for the most childish of
[entertainments] recreations and the most
frivolous or even harmful
and demoralizing of [recreations] amusements.
[*Interest of the public*]
There is no duty of
a Park Commission equally
important than with that of fixing
some limit upon the purpose
or purposes for which 
parks, park lands and
park funds shall be
available.
To [do so, it] fix such a limit a pk com will will [naturally]
first look to the law under which
[is appointed] it is established
32


Passage taken out here,
proposed to be incorporated
in report to Boston P.C.
(as to definition of purpose
& meaning of wood Park)
33[?] [?]
change order
in [dr?sh] what
follows:
24th page [ahead] ahead #

[how a hobby is taken up
by a great many people
even possibly for a time by a majority, of the
population of a city [may
be infected at a time]]
   If this can be said
to be any [general and]
settled public opinion as
to a limit upon the objects
to which a park should be
adapted, it may probably
be expressed by saying that
                               in the
[It may be said that in the]
acts establishing park [?commissions],
the word recreation is
to be understood as prefixed
to the word parks, and that
the purpose of the business of
a park commission is there
to be determined. But does
this rather broad assumption
help the matter much?
   There are a great many
pursuits that are recreative or
otherwise according to the motive
with which these are engaged in.
[?ment into this cellar
to saw wood for recreation. Suppose
that we say that the question
commissioners are rather apt to assume
that the question]

36

It is neither of a distinguished [obvious]
[p?reacher] that when he needed recreation
he went to sawing wood in his cellar. [Suppose that it is
held that the question]
There is an account of a man
who made a practice of going
to funerals for recreation. [M?]
years ago it was said to be
a common recreation for fashionable 
ladies to visit the dirtiest and
most loathsome and altogether
sad and depressing slums
of London. By regard to what
[Suppose it is said that the
question]

37rule or principle shall [the]
Park commissioners decide what
forms of recreation shall be
practiced in a park? Suppose
they say they will admit
such as are allowed on other
parks. This will allow walking
driving, riding bicyling, dancing, 
swimming, rowing, sailing
skating  curling, toboganning
[?] croquet, tennis, bowls, racket, 
archery, target firing, kite flying, merry -
go rounding, musical concerts,
Punch & Judy, theatrical entertainments,
foot races.
many kinds of horse racing

38

and
many kinds of ball-playing.
All of them and others [and
others] are prepared for or
allowed in one park or another,
though not all in any. How
shall an discrimination be made
among them? Some cannot be
allowed without [very] costly
provisions are made for them
in advance; some would cost
the city nothing. Some would
be used by [a] few some
by many. Is it to be
determined by regard for
public demand? Public

39demand in matters of recreation
is a good deal a matter of 
fashion. It varies from year 
to year and it is not difficult
for a few men interested in some
special amusement to get up 
an appearance of a great demand
for it. On an occasion
a petition was presented for
a certain provision for recreation
on a park so numerously
and respectably signed that
for a few days it had great
weight. Investigation showed
[that one man with a personal
selfish interest, was]

40

But suppose all the forms
of recreation that have been
mentioned have been provided
for and a genuine demand
appears to come from a
numerous [and weighty] body
of taxpayers, who [represent?]
that to them none of those
forms are of personal use.
That their favorite recreation
is still unprovided for?
Are they to be satisfied [by]
with the rule that only 
such shall be allowed in
the park as are found in other
parks? Is such a rule just?

41that [the petition] it had been
prepared to serve the 
commercial interests of one
man and so far as could
be ascertained not another
of his signers wished it to
be granted except as a
favor to that men. Certain
conspicuous objections to
the  object being pointed out
[?] the most prominent signers
[they] at once agreed that it
would be most undesirable.at the bottom of it, and that
[all] the names of all the other
signers had been added to
his

Is it not hard that they
should pay for other people's
recreation and not be allowed
their own?  Yielding to this
kind of argument in the
case of one new form of
amusement, where are you
going to stop? If there
are several hundred citizens
who ask for a cock-pit,
or for an exhibition of
wrestling or sparring,
or bull-fighting for
which lost public provision
has formerly been made[was less anxious to provide
the city with the least practicable
park advantages, than
to avoid giving any part of
the city markedly better
park advantages than [another]
they could give another]

in more than one of our
Southern towns, on what
ground are they to be denied?
The ground of morality?
But there are 
wide differences of opinion
in regard to the morality
of many amusements that
are now allowed in public
parks, and it is certain
that the opinion of successive Commissioners
would so vary
that amusements that would
[be forbidden one year might
be allowed the next and ]

44be favorably regarded one
year would be objected
to the next, so then if, 
for example, at one time, 
a theatre or a dancing 
hall should be built, 
a few years later it 
might be closed or torn 
down. 

[*45*]be allowed and you would 

Boston
Duties of park Com.

IV - continuous. 
46[and have] and we have been much impressed 
with the conflict of opinion 
upon them that has appeared 
[in every community concerned,]
[with] and the apparent unconsciousness 
of those of each party holding opposite 
views that the soundness 
[can be] of their own could be open to question - We 
47and have been impressed 
by the conflict of opinion 
in the communities interested 

Where this is not equally the case as to
the purposes had in view in the constitution of a 
[what is wanted] park department.
[ ¶ It will hardly be questioned 
that there are some
kinds of service to which the 
ordinary rule [would] does not apply.
It does not apply to the purposes of the Harbor Commission in Boston
for example. It does not apply to the [treatment of more cases in a city hospital.]
[If a Committee were charged]
management of a public hospital. [If a committee were charged to] 
[to oversee the process of a historical painting] 
oversee a work of historical painting or sculpture, 
[on groups of statuary] for a public
 building [no one will imagine can support]
It is not to be supported 
that a better result would be
secured should it be provided 
[Then from time to time: a city com sit]
[told that if] at a given date
ahead public opinion was not
thought to be satisfied with what 
would then be seen in the work, the 
committee would be retired and replaced 
by one of a different political
complexion.]
48As we have been asked
to consider and report [to 
you] upon some of the pending
matters to which we
have referred and to propose
plans in respect to others,
we propose, with your leave, in the present
communication,
to submit certain observations
upon the question more or
less underlying all of them,
of the fundamental responsibility
of Park Commissions.
If your Board should take
a different view from that
which will be thus presented
it is desirable that we should
instructed accordingly before further
pursuing the duties that we have
in hand.

It is that the nature of the service
wanted of th? other purpose to be accomplished is of a different nature
from that for which other departments are constituted
of a nature so differing other Departments is of]
are of such a character that anxiety on the part
of those directing them to continuously
satisfy the public opinions of the day [as represented
by the City Council and  otherwise,]
offers the best assurance that
they will be suitable served, but 
[but the nature of the service wanted of a
park department is of such a character
that, if those directing it should
be anxious that what they would be able to
show at the end of a month or a
year or two years ahead, should
be in itself pleasing to the public,
or should satisfy public expectations,]

If a park commission does not
[act] move officially with [a] an unusual degree of [ap]
superficially apparent self sufficiency [in this respect] [independence of the wishes
of his fellow citizens that would
is not  to be expected and of most
[?] public servants,] it is plain that
he is not acting in the spirit [expected]
demanded of him by the [la] Law.
  The evident assumption of the
Law is that the purposes for which
other departments have been constituted
He is rightly to be reproached for [it] such seeming self-sufficiency only when, upon
thorough examination, it is not to be
believed that he is [taking a] compelled
by a sense of the special responsibilities placed
upon him to look more searchingly
toward [the] future [results] and lasting
results than citizens [occupied with] concerned for
[concerns of] their own immediate gratification
are likely to do.
51

The evident assumption of the
Law is that the purposes for which
other departments have been constituted

[Dear Sir,
In the consideration of various 
matter now pending questions will rise
of the distinctive purposes and functions
of your Board, of the limits of its
field of duty and of the lines of division
between this field and the fields [those]
of other departments and offices of
the City Government. We have had
occasion to follow the discussion of
similar questions in a number of
other cities and to notice that [every]
wherever a park commission has been established,
its members are thought by some
of their fellow citizens to take too narrow
and strict a view of the business committed
to it, by others to be too lax and
assuming in this respect.]
But the division of opinion which is
most liable to occur and the confidence and
tenacity with which radically different
views of the nature of the duty resting on
park commissioners may be held, has been no
[where] where better illustrated than in the controversy
which has been had here in Boston upon

52Should our views of the obligations
of the Department to the 
community differ naturally
from those of the Board, our
work in devising these plans
will be wasted. For this
reason, and having [regard to]
regard to the conflicting, vague and
uncogitated impressions upon
the question that yet prevail in
this as in other communities, we
shall attempt now to submit our
views upon it, and to some extent the
grounds of them.  To these views we believe
that, with more or less wavering, the
drift of judgment has been trending of those
Park Commissioners throughout the country [w]
who have applied to the question that most 
deliberate and mature reflection. To these
views also, it has appeared to us that in cities
where Park Commission works have been most advanced
and are best known, public opinion is much the most 
inclined.Should our views of the obligation
of the [Board] Department to the community
differ materially from
those held by [members of the
Board]

There are at this time
numerous [matters] projects
before you Board some of 
detail of [plans] general plans
already adopted; some [of]
entirely new departures,
with regard to which we are
under instructions to prepare
plans for your consideration.
[Should we proceed not in accord
with the views of the Board
upon the question of the its paramount
duty to the community,
our labor would be wasted and
develop regrettable delays occur.
There would be regrettable delays
in the Board's obtaining what
it it needs of us.[trespass, views to the right
and left are restricted by
orchards and buildings where
they are not shut out by
fences and ledges. The roads
and often Passage] [m?] passages along the roads
leaving out of town is more often made unpleasant
by mud and dust, by
the glare of the sun reflected
from stoney wheelways
and broad side walks, [and]
by numerous heavy teams,
[and by] by what are called road house, [and] by more frequent small and
often disreputable drinking
places and by the unrestrained

rude conduct of those
who may be encountered.
It is [rarely] often hardly possible for a
man to take a pleasant
walk with his wife and
children in the outskirts
of a city. It is [rarely possible] often impossible
for him to [go out to
any] take them to any point
where he [may himself have] himself when young may have
been taken by his father and
mother to enjoy any extraordinary
passage of natural scenery
without finding it defaced
by shabby artificial constructions,
often of a positively squalid character, without paying
an admission fee, or without
being compelled to see and
hear much that [is destructive
of the sentiment that]
will be counteraction of the
influences that he seeks.
57


What towns people must thus
load [as towns]  if towns are to much further increase in
business and in population,
what women and children
and infirm people must
[?] is felt by some to be
a very great loss. [That
many now do not feel it so,]
Many who do not feel it
fair to do so only
because they have lacked the education
that can come only through
the use of suitable means of
enjoying simple scenes
of a broadly natural character.
¶No where can this [great evil of]
misfortune attending the growth of
cities be wholly prevented or
58overcome. But the convention obtains that
something can be
held, something [ca] be saved,
something restored, and that even for
[that which] what must be lost
of the primative charm of a
pleasant [farming region]
sparsely populated farming
region, some compensation
[can] is not impossible to be secured.
(To secure it is the first
business of a park Com.)
The more fortunate city naturally
what makes it fortunate. The
vicinity of that

Boston?
Impossibility of providing for
every sort of amusement & 
recreation.
Difficulty of finding out the true
public opinion.
Example - Race Track on Central Park
opinion fostered by stable keeper
Recourse to the circumstances
accompany the passage of
the law.
Growth of townsbut equally from cricket and hockey balls.
[but from the flying missiles 
of ball players.  They must
be kept apart and may soon]
one set of players must be kept apart
from others and very soon
it will be found that in the
largest park [there is not room]
[was] not half the space called for can
be given to various forms of
recreation for which there appears
to be a considerable public demand-

[In New York Central Park of 840 acres
there is not nearly enough a with part of
the space available for tennis
playing that would be used if
ample facilities for playing
tennis were offered. There is a
quarter length of well prepared
bridle road in the park than in
any other in the world, I believe, but
[no numerous]but from the flying missiles of
ball players. Obviously [?]
but restricted space can be
allowed for

There is a quarter length of well
prepared bridle roads in the
Central Park of New York, I believe, than in any
other public park in the world, but

63strenuous efforts are [nearly every year]
made every year or two to arrangement this particular means
of recreation. [and] There are but
two reasons why the apparent public demand
[in this respect] to augment them has not
been yielded to. first, no scheme
could be proposed that would not
injure the park as a place of recreation
in some other way equally
desirable to be enlarged, and
second none of which the cost
would not be thought extravagant by most
tax-payers. [extravagant.]
In considering this branch of
the subject, [you must remember] it must be remembered
further that it is an easy matter for a
for a [hundred very few men out of a population 
of a million, it the hundred are much in earnest]
64

few men if they are much in 
earnest to make a very strong
appearance of public opinion.
[I] We have seen several illustrations
of this in the proceedings
of park commissions. Once [I] we
made a journey of nearly a
thousand miles, post haste, at
the urgent request of the President
of a Park Commission who
wrote [me] us that a tide of public
demand had set in which
[en f?d] would be irresistable
in favor of making a
race course in a public park.
When [I] we arrived he showed [me a] us a
petition for the purpose signed by a few well
known and respected men &
many more not well known[I called at once] We at once called on the most
eminent and influential of the
[signers] farmer and induced him to
go with [me] us to the park [where
I we pointed out to him the folly 
of what was proposed] and
consider the probable consequences.
In less than five minutes after he had been told so he was ready
to head a remonstrance against
the proposition. [And so it was
with others. more or less with all the ? could see.]
In the end the Commissioners
were satisfied that
the supposed [was solely the] tide of public opinion
had been wholly moved by one man, a livery
stable keeper, who had employed
skillful agents to procure the 
petition and obtain signatures
[to it, and afterwards ?
a highly displayed newspaper notice
in which it appeared as a great
popular movement.]
66

to it. He even succeeded in
making more than one editions
between that there was a strong
popular movement for his
object.  We have known a
[similar] movement for introducing
a new gate and entrance [road]
road into the plan of a park
engineered with equal [success 
by one man, who 
a man who cess by a ?]
for a time equal promise of success by a man
whose sole interest in the measure was
that of the corner of a dram
shop opposite the propose
gate.
It hardly need be pointed
out what dangers would be in this direction
but for the arm of the law to
make Park Commissions peculiarly independent
of momentary gusts of apparent public
opinion.
67[I hope that I have succeeded
to make you realize that
I said truly that neither in
law or by custom or through
an established and unquestionable
public opinion is the object
of the business of park commissions
distinctly defined.
I need not I hardly need point out to you
what dangers live in this
circumstance.]  Suppose
you go into a ships yard
and find the keel laid and
timbers fitting for a vessel
but that opinions vary among
the constructors as to whether
68

the vessel is to be a
freighting schooner or a
sloop yacht; a steam
ferry boat or a steam 
tug. That would be
bad business. And so a
like unfixed [definite]
purpose would make bad
business of any human
undertaking.
[You may say that
the remedy is to adopt a
plan. Unfortunately that
is no remedy because a
? finding at any time,]
69and yet you may ask if
the difficulty in its application
to the business of a park
commission is not theoretcial rather
than practical. [I]
 We may express
the result of [my] our experience, perhaps,
in this way.
70

[You may ask if, practically,
this indefiniteness and uncertainty
of the purpose of park commissions
and the differences of opinion these
grow out of it are of much practical
consequence. I answer that
they are. They cannot will be estimated
too highly.  I may express
my opinion best perhaps in this]
The city of New York in [my] an opinion
might have had a better park
than [she] it has at a saving of
five millions of dollars, if the views
of what is wanted in a park [had]
that seem now at last to be pretty
well settled down upon in that city, had been
clearly held from the inception of
71
[If not distincly defined
in law in custom or established 
public opinion,
where shall the object of
the establishment of
park commissions be
found.]
[I answer in the circumstances
that have
will]

the business and if any step in its
progress had been a clear headed
adaptation of means to ends
in respect to that want. [If it
was worth while I am we are confident
that I we could make this so probable
to you by going into particulars that
you would not need to accept as a
matter of opinion.]
[I] We come then to the question
what want of the communities
for whom they act [is it] can it reasonably be held to be the proper
business of park commissions to
meet, and what limit can
be placed upon the demands
that should be made upon Park Commission by considerate good citizens?
[What standard of criticism applies
to their work? For what ought they
to be held accountable?]
72X
Failing to find in the words of the law
any sufficiently definite statement of the
object for which they are appointed to what
should Park Commissioners look for instruction
on the point? The answer seems
to be that they should look to the circumstances
under which the law was passed.
[or rather such a case as that of the
Rochester Commission to the circumstances
under which]
or, rather, the law in the case of each
Commission [is established] being one of a
series of laws similar in title and purport,
that they should look to the circumstances under which the
series has been passed, considering whether
their circumstances establish the fact
of a popular [?t] to which under any
reasonable construction of the purpose of
the law it can be seen to have been
intended to supply relief.
The Rochester law is one of a series
all passed within forty years, all
73Failing to find in the words of the law any
[such] definition of the purpose committed
to them [as practically limits their duty
that]

applicable the conditions of the large and
growing towns, all [pressing?] for a board
of Commissions called Park Comissions
and having many other provisions in common.
It happens that a little
more than 40 yrs or soon after [with] this introduction
of rail roads [?] very [un?able]
social circumstance [is] are to be noted [in the]
the first being an unprecedented movement of population
[to] certain towns, the second an unprecedented 
tendency of townspeople to separate
their places of residence from their places of
work and to extend the outskirts of town,
[so that, relatively their population, towns 
now spread over a much larger are than
thing and fifty or sixty years ago. as a consequence
It is]
by spreading out their dwellings, leaving
larger & larger spaces between them
74Preservation of scenery different from
  "                    of natural objects.
75

It must be observed here that the
presentation of natural scenery is a very
different thing from the presentation of natural
objects. Natural objects, trees [and flo]
bushes and flowers, for example, may [easily
be so] be presented to great advantage as single
objects, or in groups, [and] compositions and spectacles
in themselves of great beauty and splendor, yet
not only without the least charm of [natural] scenery
but with distinction to any preexisting
[charm of that mature] charm of scenery in
the locality taken for the exhibition.

76[??]
Scenery natural to
the region - not
exotic

77

Central Park.

78[Park Commissioners should take]
The designers of the plan adopted
for the [first] first of our
American public parks, [stated
that] publicly stated that it was
conceived wholly with regard to
results to be fully attained only
after a period of growth of forty
years, and that however [rapidly]
soon it might be made to
begin to yield returns for
the [cutting?] to be made upon it,
the full dividends to [t] which 
the city would be entitled from
[from the investments to be
made in it]
its investment should not be
expected sooner than that.
79At the bottom of this feeling

Thirty three years of the period
have now been passed and
there is not probably an citizen
[of that] of the town who has
a thought unfavorable to the
management of the work except
that the policy thus advised
has not been more thoroughly
and steadily pursued. It is
universally recognized that
it was a policy of the [somed]
soundest economy and that it has
greatly strengthened the financial
[condition of the town]
standing of the city.
80Arnold Arboretum &
City of Boston.
81

Having the honor to be asked to assist
in planning the proposed Arnold Arboretum
of Harvard College and at the same
to advise in regard to a system of [out don
recreation grounds] public grounds for the City
of Boston, and the suggestion having been
made that the objects had in view by the city
and the college might be in some way associated,
I have [formed the a crude outline of
a project for a cooperative for that purpose]
informed myself of the views of the Commissioners
of Parks and of [the] a portion of the Trustees of the College
and endeavored to form a project which [I could before could lie cut] might have some chance
of success with each...
82It is an easy matter to plan [an arboretum] a collection of trees
which with no [heavy] great outlay for construction
or material would be much more complete 
better arranged and more skillfully adapted
to usefulness than any which the wild has
yet possessed.
   Such a collection would have a character
and value with reference to Botany and
allied sciences which the museums, cabinets
laboratories and libraries of the college have with
reference to Zoology, Geology and Chemistry.
   It would have greater popular attractiveness,
[tion] would afford more direct popular
instruction and its direct contributions to
arboriculture and the useful arts would be [more
obvious] frequent and obvious.
   It would supply  [as] standards of nomenclature
which could be found of equal value nowhere
else and reference to these would be constant from
great numbers of interested persons throughout the country
and beyond it.
   It would [be a means and encouragement] offer important means & stimulus to the original
study of vegetable forms [in the decorative arts, a matter of much public moment.]
especially in the [?dec] department of the Fine Arts.
   These are all objects to be cherished by the college.

83


However reluctant the college [?]
gage directly in such an under[?]
at this period it is much to be [desi?]
[with in plans] if it is to underta[?]
arboretum that it should do so only upon a [p?]
and with a view to a foundation which
will admit [of] the ultimate development
of [such] an institution [of] approaching at least the scope and
character which has thus been indicated.
   Having such a purpose in view the fir[?]
step would be to secure a site [possessing
a considerably var] offering a considerable
variety of conditions, [as to the quality of soils]
in soils, aspects, degrees of moisture and otherwise
in order that each species to be represented
in the collection might be placed with
some [of] degree of appropriateness.

84[a site would be desirable
the proportion the extent respectively of rugged [?]
steeply inclined, gently [inc?]
level, dry, moist and [?]
[ltered], coolly exposed and [w?]
[?d] ground rich [canp?]
[?ly] poor surface
proportions be in [cer?]]
[?]. [The site in [question?]]
¶The Bussey farm site [certain] has a [gr?]
excess of certain conditions [in these]
[?] a marked deficiency of others.
It has, for example, not more than
5% of level sheltered, moist [ferti?]
land. The project would add
value of the site in this respect
   No approach.Arboretum

[Inquiry from what has occurred in other
cities]
   The adoption of some of
them is likely to lead the
[city] Boston into undertakings involving
outlays [not only]
not only for land and
constructions but continuously,
in all the future,
for maintenance and repairs
[prins pairs, and thus
in fields the Commissions
duty to enter which will 
by some be questioned
and in which its responsibility
will at least be
complicated with that of]The adoption of some of them
will lead the city on to
undertakings involving
[not only arb] large outlaysThe Honorable T.L. Livermore,
Chairman of the Board of Commissioners
of Public Parks of the City of Boston.
Dear Sir, An unusual number
of questions and projects have lately come
before your Board in the discussion of
which some regard might with advantage
be had for the experience and the
general drift of judgement of other Park
Commissions.  It has occurred to us that it
might serve a good purpose if we should
lay before your Board some of the
information in this respect that we have
had opportunities of acquiring these opportunities
growing largely out of the fact that we have
had part professionally in the counsels of
more than twenty Boards of Park Commissions
and have followed the history of [a numbers of]
others, studying their reports, examining their
works and conferring personally with those in
direction of them.[The Honorable T.L. Livermore,
Chairman of the Board of Park
Commissioners of Boston.
   Dear Sir, An unusual number of
questions and projects have lately come
before your Board in a full discussion of
which consideration would wisely be
given to the experience and the general drift
of judgment of other Park Commissions.]

   While no two of our American Park
Commissions are constituted quite
alike, the general aims and methods
of nearly all are sufficiently [so to] akin to
allow them to be viewed collectively,
[and] as an institution with [slight]
local variations.

[While no two of our American Park Commissions are
constituted quite alike, they are all
sufficiently so in general aims and]While no two of our American Park
Commissions are constructed quite
alike, none vary so much from
a central type that a collective view
[with advantages be regarded col]

   [While no two of our American Park Commissions are constituted quite
alike, the variation from a central
type of none of them [bodies] is so
great [?] [?] may not all be
considered as variations of a single
institution of many branches.]
   Examined in that light the
first common circumstance to which we
would ask alteration is [the one?] the
Park Commission, as a Department
of city administration, while it
appears to be firmly established,
is of such recent introduction
that its value is no where yet to be
[judged by its works. Probably a majority
of the Park Commission works now
in progress in all the country have 
been]fairly judged by its works. The
first definite undertaking of
your Commission, that of the Fens,
was entered upon thirteen years
ago. The territory to be dealt with
was comparatively small, hardly
exceeding a hundred acres in extent.
A million [of] dollars has been
expended upon it but to this day the
larger part of all the work [that has
been done upon] done has been that of grading
operations and road-making;
[disposition of raw materials]
That is to say, chiefly the disposition
of raw materials [below the intended
finished surfaces] to remain
concealed beneath the intended finished
surfaces.  Any thing pleasant

to look upon that is to come from
all your outlay will come as the
results of the growth of certain
plantings and sowings which [are
yet in] plantings and sowings are
yet incomplete, and when complete,
will have cost but a trifling
fraction of your total outlay.
There are very few of all the
citizens of Boston, not probably
one in a thousand, who have [had]
had such training as is necessary
to enable a judgment of the slightest
value to be formed upon the
question of what these results [will]
are to be; and among a hundred of
those best qualified for the duty
the judgment of one half of them might differ
considerably from those of the other half.to see that

   Obviously there is nothing to
be seen as yet, after eleven
years, from which [the ordinary citizen a citizen of ordinary]
a citizen ordinarilly well informed and intelligent can form a fair judgment
as to the design of this
work or as to the economy [of
the operations] with which the 
operations have been directed.
   And we may say that
we have known no other community
in which the state of
the case in this respect could
have been expected to be as
[well] generally appreciated as
it has been in [Boston] that of
Boston. We have been surprised
at the patience and forbearance with
which the tedious progress of operations in the Fens has been generally
regarded.[significantly very few of the citizens
of Boston can, as yet, have an
intelligent opinion from personal observation
of the value of
the work what has thus far been done; of the degree in which
the work has been judiciously conducted,  and economically conducted or of the
course of management needed to be pursued
in the future to secure the intended harvest.]
   It is true that [it has been]
this has been in some degree, an exceptional case; the
amount of preparatory work required
having been unusual. 
[but the facts stated show how
entirely untrustworthy
foolish and wrong it would be]

We have cited it [to show] but to exhibit
more distinctly by an [extreme case] instance
acknowledged to be extreme, a difficulty which
more or less formidably stands
everywhere before the Park Department
[any where] of city governments and which, if [it is
to have a] the Commissioners are to earn a respectable success,
has to be met manfully.
   [What this difficulty is may be [more?]
[fully] fully set forth by
[this way] a statement which
we can make as a result of
observation [under] in many
[different communities,] widely distributed 
communities, which is this:
   For a long time after the appointment
of a Board of Park Commissioners the
community whose servants they are
is pervaded][foolish and wrong a Park Commission 
would be that should aim to follow rather 
than lead public opinion.  Its position 
in this respect is analagous to that of 
a Board of Health.]



It may perhaps be more fully set 
forth in this way.  

For a long time after the appointment 
of a Board of Park Commissioners 
the community whose servants 
they are is pervaded[The general fact this illustrated
points to a special difficulty with
which Park Commissioners have every
where to contend, namely that for
¶ For a long time after a Park Commission
has been established, the community
whom it serves and whose mon
earnings it is spending is pervaded]

in a singular degree with vague,
confused, incoherent and inconsistent
[ideas] notions of the nature of the
benefits which are to come to it
from the Commissioners work. Large
numbers of it will have expectations widely 
conflicting with the expectations of other large numbers.
[Conflicting expectations in this respect
are common.]  There is no other public
office in the United States concerning the
essential use and reason for the existence of
which there is as little clear common understanding
and intelligent agreement.

such public opinion as [really] exists
[Public opinion] being thus divided
as to what should be expected
it necisarilly occurs that on

[Certain][How this appears and certain
consequences of it we will first
attempt to show.
   Public opinion, being much divided,
as we have said, though
not on clear and definite lines,
as to what should be expected,
it necessarily occurs that on]

whatever view of its duty a
Park Commission may act, its
action cannot be that which
[differ much from this which]
many will have expected of it;
cannot fail, consequently, [to]
[for a time.] to cause dissapointment
and dissapointment. 

[*And dissapointments [and failures to be pleased]
with what a Commission has done are the more likely
to be felt for the reason that much the larger part of its
entire work is often, as in the case we have cited, preparatory
work, of no value in its immediately observable results.*]

[much the larger part
of the work of a Park Commission
as we have said is necessarily preparatory and the immediate results of it are crude. Before
its intent can be]

Before the intent of this preparatory work can in any important
degree be realized, that is to say, the forces of nature
must have been operating for a series of years upon 
the basis which results from it. [for a series of years]
[upon several years. This long period of
probation for Park]During the preparatory period
those to whom the immediate
results have not been a surprise
are much less apt to
express their views than those
to whom they are a dissapointment
Remonstrances, memorials and
petitions often come to Park Commissions
for the latter purpose.

[Such manifestations of
dissapointment, dissatisfaction
and distrust as we
indicated to be usual
do not proceed alone
from citizens in their individual
capacity. They
often come in the form of
remonstrances, memorials and petitions.]
We recall no instance in
which any number of citizens have
united to testify to Commissioners
their satisfaction with their work, but
many in which Committees, deputations
and delegations claiming to represent an
important element of public opinion, have
appeared [before Commissions] to represent
dissatisfaction. Sometimes they have been
formidable in numbers and have assumed
a threatening attitude.   [Your own Commissions, it may 
be said, has thus far been remarkably 
fortunate in this 
respect.  Considering certain 
difficulties almost peculiar 
[to it] to the local circumstances, 
perhaps more fortunate 
than any other in the country.] 
In several [towns] cities the majority of 
the newspapers and the city 
council, assuming to represent 
public opinion, have done all that 
was possible to place obstructions in 
the way of the commission; in our case 
the Commission has been unable to proceed 
in its duty until it had obtained 
an order of Court [restraining the City] compelling the 
mayor and City Council to abandon the 
position they had taken.  [The results of the] 
and it may be worth while to mention that the result of theYour own Commission, it may
be said, has thus far been [ingular?]
remarkably fortunate 
in this is

resolution and peseverance of
the Commission in this case was
a few years later, [an extreme
popularity] a degree of popularity
that was almost [by [?] is
disposition being] burdensome, a
tendency being evident to
place undesirable responsibilities
upon it.
   [Manifestations of the dissatisfaction
and distrust
in the in the earlier
years of a commission such
of citizens with the work
of the Commission are by
no means limited to private
do not proceed]It is noticeable that when
[when] organized bodies of
citizens ask a hearing from
a Park Commission it is
nearly always with a purpose
[?]
often around, sometimes hidden,
[?] to induce it to take
some action specifically
for the benefit of a comparativelyGenerally the avowed purpose
of

[situations is to induce the Commissioners
to take action for the
exclusive benefit specifically of a comparatively]
small subdivision of all the
people of [a] the city, as if the
owners of a particular body of
land, or of the practitioners
of a particular [game or form method
of recreation. In these latter cases,
especially, a definition of the duty of the
commission is often assumed that
will bear hardly the slightest examination.
For instance, it is often
[said to be] taken to be its duty to provide [places and]
means of recreation for the people,
and these having been [done] provided for certain
numbers taking their recreation in
[various] certain ways other than that desired 
by the applicants it is held that justice]method of recreation. In the
[these] latter case, especially,
[a definition of] an assumption as to the duty of
the Commission often appears
for which there is not the slightest
warrant. [Commissioners 
are told that, as they have
made it practicable for certain people
to [take recreation in certain ways]
in ways in which they are
[to use] practiced, justice requires that
they should make it equally
practicable for other people
to take recreation in other
ways which they prefer]

[Certain] Numbers of citizens in every community
are disposed to find [their recreations]
recreation in methods entirely
different from those preferred by
others.  Means [being] having been provided [for]
by Park Commissions for certain
[recreations] methods of recreation
[it is] the assumption [often] appears
[in representations made to it]
that justice requires that
those who do not [benefit by] use
these means should be provided with
other means; that it is simply a question
of the numbers desiring to
engage in any form of recreation
whether provisions for recreation
in that form should be [provided]
supplied at the expense of
the city.one class

[to take recreation in ways
which [they] these people like and in
which they are practiced,
justice to these who do not
like these ways and who are not 
practiced in them makes it
necessary that means 
should be provided for [them]
[to] these other citizens to take recreation in other
forms which they do like
and in which they [are] may be
practiced.]  Very intelligent
men and good citizens [and
tax-payers] have often taken
this ground but it must
have been without considering
[of] what it involved.
In Spain city governmentsmake provision for the recreation
[of] of their people by Bull fights; in Mexico
by cock-fights, provisions for neither of which forms of recreation
would these citizens [probably] think desirable to be made
by a park commission, if even a majority of a community
should desire them. There is no
limit to the variety of forms [in]
of recreation for which, under such a view of
their duty, Park Commissioners
[may] might be required to make provision;
no limit to [what]
the spaces of ground [and of the]
or the drafts on their financial
resources that they [may] might be
asked to devote to these
forms.

The late Mr Barnum once sought 
permission to occupy a part of
the finished ground of the Central
Park of New York [with his "great
[?] show"], promising to give
an exhibition that would be many-fold 
more attractive [and more
recreative] than any thing the
Commissioners had to show for
all they had spent upon it. There
is not the least doubt that
he could easily have [done it] kept this promise.
[There is even less doubt that
the Legislature could provide an
attraction that would [enable a]
bring several times a year much
larger numbers to the Park than]But the commissioners were
of the opinion that in assuming
that it was their duty to favor whatever would
add to the attractions or increase
the recreation of the profile
on the Park, [should be allowed] Mr Barnum
misconceived the nature of
their business. [as many other
citizens had done.]But it was the opinion of the
commissioner that

[have not ever been drawn to
it by simply enacting that
all executions for murder
in the city of New York
[should by] should be made
upon [it] in open view of the
public upon it.]
  When a bill was before
the British Parliament providing
that the practice of hanging [a]
certain classes of criminals
"in chains", leaving their bodies
exposed until by decay their 
bones fell out [to the ground, ]
remonstrances were received
in which it was stated that
as executions of this order were
[always] usually made outside
of large towns but at a distanceBreak 


[He is entitled to no 
fee; perquisite or property advantage 
in any form because of 
his position as a Commissioner.] 
In connection with others of his 
Board he can cause the landed 
property and the homes of citizens 
to be taken from them against their will [at prices 
much below those at which the 
owners value them] and he can 
dispose of large funds which 
have been obtained by loans to the [independence unbecoming public
servants. [Yet] Oftener the change is
made that the operation of a
Park Commission are largely directed
to [the satisfaction of particular] meet the wishes of particular
classes of citizens, as, for example, those living
or owning real estate in the neighborhood
of [their] the park works, of street car companies
or of those who come to the
[parks in] parks in their own carriages
in distinction from those coming by street cars or on foot. Yet [?] it is complained
that not sufficient regard is paid to
the interests of particular classes.
In some cities favoritism [is charged]
or the opposite is charged as to one class,
in others as to another class of interests.
[It is not to be supposed that all
such charges are unjust
It is ? that such charges against
Park Commissions are studied with care]

[He is entitled to no salary, for
perquisite or [personal property
benefit in any form] advantage
in property in any form because of
his position as a Commissioner. [He
has large sums placed at his disposal]
Large funds are given in trust to him
jointly with others [park commissioners] of his bond 
which funds are obtained by loans to be]
paid many years after wards and
mainly by a body of tax-payers
whose interests in the results of
the operations which his bond directs, he has no
right to sacrifice [to meet the demands
the wishes the interests the wishes the
demands of the present population]
from regard to the interests of the demand, however
presented and urged of the living population.
[though these may be present by ?
these may be represented in city
?uals or by even so strong a pressure 
of the public opinion and p?
and social influence of the day.]
He is in this respect a trustee, unpaid &, therefore, a
trustee on honor, for persons unable
at present to [advocate] stand for their own interests,and there is no duty resting
upon him [so] with such
imperative moral face as
that of protecting the [fu?]
general interests
of the future [entire] population
of [the] his city as a whole from dangers

[that would grow out 
[of] [gus?] to which they would
be exposed more demands to
be yielded to [either growing out] such as are liable
to grow from impulses of personal cupidity
and personal tastes and
habits, or, from any a less [per?
grievous] selfish, far seeing and comprehensive
view of the business
committed to them than the
law [plainly] contemplates that they]

gus to which they would
be exposed were the business
to be conducted on 
the principles [individually]
individually ruling in the management
[of matters of city business.]
of such city business as the laying out of streets,
paving, lighting, sewering and so on.
It is reasonable to assume
that it would not have become
customary to place park[they should ?]
¶[It would not have become and remained
customary to place park]
commissioners in a [an unusual]
position so far differing from that of
most other [departments of city government
were there not reason for]
citizens given changes of city works
had there not been reason for
thinking it necessary to the accomplishment
of the [objects] purpose to be committed to them
that they should act with a [rare 
rare degree of] special independence of ordinary
political, commercial personal, and social influences
and with a clear recognition of [their
duty] a special duty resting on them to consider questions to come before them
from a different point of view from that ordinarily 
taken or that can reasonably be expected to be
[taken by citizens generally 
or by their [annually] elected representatives.
The evident assumption of the law is that the
purposes for which most other departments have been constituted]

[No one can form a respectable judgment
[upon] as to the justice in particular cases of such charges
without a much closer examination that][Such charges have perhaps been sometimes justly
made generally this injustice is to be seen upon a slight
The injustices of such charges is often
would often be made evident by a slight
examination of the position in which Park
Commissioners are placed by the law. [For
example, a commissioner is very little under
the control of any? body and is unmoved by
annual] commonly holds office for a series
of years independently of city councils, or of 
annual elections. He receives no salary
fees or perquisites.
example ¶A park commissioner commonly
receives and hold his office independently of
City Councils and for a series of years [sometimes
for] in many cases from five to ten. He is
neither a representative of [no] not under obligation to any ward, neighborhood,
party, faction, class or special interest.
[but is bound to have a great regard
for acc regard for the whole city and for
the city as a whole.] He receives no salary
fees, or perquisites and has not right to use
his office for [any personal, local the benefit
of any] a preser? benefit or for the benefit of
any special locality person or body of persons
less that [the people] that of the people of the city.]

taken by citizens generally
or by their representatives
in City Councils elected for short terms [of
and with] and for duties
of a more general scope.
But although Park
Commissioners are thus plainly
assigned to a special duty,
requiring them to act with
unusual [independence]
freedom from motives generally
desirable to be 
operative [upon] with public officers,
if a clear,concise,
working definition of that [purpose] duty
is looked for it will be found
[in no act of legislation]
in not one of all the acts of legislation
that have been taken on the subject,The title of the act [establishing] providing for
a Park Commission commonly
reads: "An Act to
provide for the establishment
of a Public Park," or [in] words
equivalent to these, and it often
happens that nowhere in the
body of the act is the purpose
to be served by the
Commission more definitively
stated or more precisely
limited than it is in those words.
What, then, in the eye 
of the Law is a park?

[No one will contend] It cannot be contended that our American
park commissions have been constituted
as they are [simply] to serve any
purpose of parks as [thus] defined by]

¶The word [park] has been
[much] used with as, [to as a general 
term] to cover nearly all sorts of [grounds spaces in]
spaces of public property about a form which are not intended
to be [used as] given to streets [would
be occupied by buildings, such as] and building.
Among them are included spaces
[which are] otherwise specifically known as commons,
[greens?], squares, yards, [?ter] fields, play grounds and gardens. 

[In several
of our cities committees ? cases
Sometimes Committees of City Councils have charge
of their various grounds are designated
Committees have borne the designation
Committee on Parks. [But in the formation
of a Park Commission as it ]
City governments have often established
new grounds [of this class without under this ? designation]
classing them as parks without
resort to any such [maclining?] as
that of a Park Commission and in
many cases, as in Boston, when a
Park Commission has been constituted
it has not been given charges
of such grounds [but they] previously existing but these grounds have remained
under the same management
as before. Even new grounds of that character have
been acquired which a park commission was in
operation and independently of it. This being the case it is reasonable
to assume that the word park
in an act [constituting] specially providing for such a
commission [does not apply to
grounds of the character and adapted to serve of commons,]
is not intended to charge it with
the duty of supplying additional spaces for the same purposes
with those of Commons,
Greens, Squares yards Muster Grounds, Play Grounds
[grounds adapted to serve no other 
purpose of a distinct character
from that [of] for which such grounds are filled.
What then is the specific significance 
of the work park as thus
used by the Law?]

Now is it reasonable to suppose
that the [intent with which] word park in the acts constituting
Park Commissions is intended to be applied
as is sometimes assumed to places simply adapted to a display
of fine equipages and horses or fashionable
assemblages of any sort of for
walking courses or ponds for boating
and skating, [or an] or arenas for

[public debates or addresses or for ball playing or other athletic exercises. for no
competent man taking up [a problem]
the problem of providing for [such many of them]
any one or all these purposes would have found it difficult
to meet [at] the requirement in a much better
and much less costly way that it has
been? in any the selection [of an] park. [The]
[What then is the legal significance of the park?
What, then, can be the specific 
significance of the word]

Now can there be found in
a study of the early movements
leading to the acts providing for
Park Commissions that they were [w?]
intended to provide the people of a town
with

public debates or addresses or for ball-playing
or other athletic exercises, for, if the object
of obtaining spaces well adapted to be
prepared for [any of these or all of]. These
purposes had been controlling it would
not have led to the choice of [such]
sites [or] of such a character as those that have been taken. Better
sites [at less cost] for such purposes, could nearly always
have been [found] obtained than those that have been selected. Whatever the site of

[What, then, is the [spe] significance
of the word park, as used
in the acts providing for these Commissions?]

Franklin Park in Boston, for example, was good
for: it [is certain that it would
not] was certainly not one that
would have been [selected] chosen simply
from regard to these purposes
more suitable ground for these purposes was to be
had at less cost within a hundred yards of the site take. It
was not overlooked.  It was not thrown out without a reason.
As to the [definiti] recorded 
definition of the word,
Again it would have been easy to find 
sites for public grounds [adapted to] 
better adapted to be prepared for [all] 
any of these purposes, and which 
would have been less costly [than] 
to procure, than those taken under 
the law providing for park commissions 
for almost any of our large 
cities.  It is plain that none of 
these purposes have controlled the 
choice of a site an any case.


BreakBut though this fact [does not
be] is not without a significance
of some value, it does not [define]
go far to define the purpose [will] for which Park
Commissions have been given their
peculiar powers.
[It will be well to ask, then, if there] It may be asked, then, whether
there is any thing in the circumstances under
which the [series?] of acts [were passed to constitute park]
constituting park commissions have been enacted
from which a reasonable inference
can be drawn as to the purpose
[they have been designed to accomplish of the purpose]
leading to their enactment.
[Forty years ago there was hardly
a town in the United States [fr?] the
central parts of which]

upon this point [of inquiry the] the
following suggestion  [may be considered is submitted]
claims consideration.
The first movement [be] in the
United States leading on to the appointment
of a Park Commission [occurred
a little less than for began a little]
began forty years ago (1852). Since [then
and mainly] that time, and mostly within the last twenty
years, nearly every considerable
prosperous town in the country, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to
the Gulf, has asked and obtained State legislation
for such a commission, and action
of corresponding import has been taken by
Congress with regard to our capital [the] city of Washington.
[In connection with this circumstance historical occurence
it is to [be] be considered that nearly]Now a truly portentous
circumstance in the history
of mankind, has [during]
in this same period of forty
years been 
growingly manifest. [as never
before] This is a tendency of
 [appearing in all civilized
countries to the gather]
people to come together as never before in great towns and of great
forms to depict much more than 
before from the old fashions of close building
which had their origin
in necessities of military defence
and difficulties of transportation,
before wheeled vehicles came into general use,
and to spread out by establishing
much broader streets and blocks.

Of our American forms in 
which this double tendency has been 
most marked, nearly all that were
[what forty years ago were
forty years ago ...them
which [?] trading posts
or villages or frontier villages]
much more than trading 
posts or frontier villages had
already, before our first Party Commission was established,
acquired various small public grounds.
Most of them also had been
[laid out]prepared for certain uses to be made of them;
walks had been made through them, 
trees planted and objects introduced
which were regarded 
as ornamental. There
[Forty years ago nearly every town
[in the] of importance in the United
States possessed some public grounds
[and most] many of these grounds had been enclosed,
[and ornamental walks had been
made] laid out in in them and something done for
them to make them ornamental.]
There were, for example, such grounds indiscriminately often [called]
classed as parks, in the city of New York and [they
were numerous in] Philadelphia, Baltimore
and Savanna were celebrated for the numbers of them which they possessed.
[There were other grounds
Many were used by people living near them
as promenades.] There were in some cities other grounds
used as play grounds and yet others as
muster and parade grounds. The need of
[forty years ago]
[But at this time, forty years ago,
there was]

[Forty years ago there was nearly
every town in the ?]But we do not [?]

any strong man[?[ was thus provided in the way of public 
grounds had [?], forty [?] been felt many coming need for
it practicallly anticipated. [At this time,
forty years ago]
These were, in fact, at that time, but one or two American
towns, from which it was not possible for people,
when so inclined, to escape in less
than half an hour into regions of
comparatively simple, fresh, wholesome,
spacious, quiet rural scenery.[There is no American city from [the conf] even the
control points of which, it has not till lately ben
It will be found [ly?ing]
there. It is not long since
it was possible in a few minutes to walk or
drive out in a short time from ? the control
district parts of every of every American city
into the midst of comparatively
simple, fresh, wholesome,
spacious rural scenery, into
regions of scenery which in most cases to those compelled to
to pass most of their time in
the town, were, because of their natural
refreshing natural rural character,
for soothing and refreshing & reinvigorating to their visitors.]
By going a little further it may
generally practicable for those 
waming forth to lean the high road
and make their way pleasantly through meadows or along
the skirts [of woods] or into the depths of woods.

And although the compactly
built parts of their towns
more than very much smaller
than now, and in the larger
parts of them there was yet
much garden ground and considerable
areas not built upon,
it was well known to many
of their people as a result of personal experience that to get clear
out of them into the open country
often had [a] upon many a most soothing and refreshing
effect.  This, even if the
escape from the town was for
no more than half an hour; much
more [was it the case, and]
when half a day could be given
to such an excursion and especially
was this recognized to be the case
with respect to invalids and convalescents
provided they were not subject to too much exposure
and fatigue. It was a common thing for physicians to
order their patients to be taken from their sick rooms [into carriages
and driven] and given a drive in the country, and marvelous effects
were sometimes reported of such excursions.




[But with the constantly
enlarging population and
of nearly every thriving town
such] 
But as an effect of the urbanizing tendency to which we
have referred there has since come somewhat
suddenly, [upon] for nearly every
thriving town, a time [come
soon when has since come
a little later when if] when if any thing of this old
privilege remained for its
busy people, it had [been plain become obvious]
grown to be obvious to all thinking men
that it would not remain long.
[In many of them it
long since years ago came to pass that
noting remained having the character] 
In many cases, indeed, it soon came to pass that
nothing like a pleasant
country road was left
near them. Those which had 
formerly had an agreeable picturesque
character had generally been
widened and straightened.

[lation. It had often been found necessary
in order to meet the wants of [the an increasing
population] its people and of those 
dealing with them to widen and straighten
nearly all the old suburban roads.]
In the process [the rurality of their]
their sylvan borders [and all the quality of picturesqueness they had possessed]
had been destroyed, and to
[this to] those disposed to wander
away from them to enjoy such
rurality as remained in their neighborhoods [view at
a little distance] warnings [were given] had been posted
that if they did so they would be treated
as trespassers.  Even outlooks to the 
right and left from these roads began to be [cut off
by generally cut off by] cut off, miles from the town by close fences and roadside buildings.
[and orchards.] These circumstances with the
increasing use of the wheel ways by all manner of vehicles
and the frequent interruption of passage
on the side walks by operations of building,
sewering and like operations [left none of destroyed
the pleasure formerly to be had in a walk or
drive out of town.] left nothing available of the pleasure
[or soothing influence] formerly to be 
had in a short [excursion from the
towns] outing from the town
such as a merchant or a laborer might take after his days work was done.[This having been already the case]
This state of things having [already]
already begun to appear in the suburbs of
[in] several of our large towns [forty
years ago,] and thinking men accustomed
to exercise even in small measure anything like statesmen-like
forecast, [having] in having been [led] thus led to apprehend[ing]
that the effect of rail roads and
[other mod other] other recent developments
affecting commerce would [be
in time greatly] yet further increase the difficulty
[of] with which in after years the people
of a city would escape from it confinement,

[and disturbances its excitements, and disturbances 
the following supposition may be considered is it not reasonable to suppose
that the word park came for convenience of discussion to be
term having significance with relation to brief term to suggest a purpose to
establish a place reservation of ground near a city in which
so much as might yet be practicable of
[?] the quieting, soothing, tranquilizing
influence of such rural scenery as grows
out of topographical circumstances suitable 
to the places known to [the our] old common law [there
in have inherited as parks, might be as a sa?
be provided as a means of health for its future people.]

Boston. To Park Com.           1892?
Incomplete.
Park Commissioners
Their duties
responsibilities
Purpose of a Park
Greater need of 
Parks in large citiesexcept that of providing the [future
people of] people of a [large town they 
can escape] town with a place in which
they could escape better than they could in a smaller one
from the sight and hearing
of crowds, the jar and bustle of streets
and the [limits upon] vision of 
buildings; where they [can] could find the
soothing influence upon the nerves
[that] and the effect upon the mind
and body through the imagination
of what, [is called] because no one
succeeds in explaining it satisfactarilly,
[is called] we are apt to call the charm of natural
scenery.  To [a high degree of the
charm] secure the highest degree practicable
[of this charm, exposure, health,
extended play of light and shade]
[of this charm] of this influence it is necessary to [establish] secure variety of incident
subordinate to broad effects of light and
shade, [and] extended perspectives
[distances] and the softening action of
distance upon [colors] the tints of verdure
and foliage. [and this purpose cannot
be]. To accomplish [this] such a purpose larger spaces
[are necessary] are indispensable.

[The first act important movement of every park
Commission has been to search for obtain possession of
a large body of land-] a body 
of land many times larger than
would be necessary for a park
[in the sense that it is] the loose sense in which it had been before applied to 
commons squares, play grounds
[Race Grounds] and Gardens. Just so it has happened in [several
cases] in a number of cases the law so obtained having
as the very first step in the [action] work of a Park Commission
had an extent of over a thousand acres, and in several of over
five hundred.
¶[Why would not the 
object of a for] It has often been asked why the
purpose for which a
Park Commission is constituted would not be [be much]
better served by establishing 
five grounds each of a
hundred acres, and so scatteredabout the suburbs of a [quiet]
town that none of its people would
be at a great distance from it?

[There is but one answer. That
[would be] has always been an unanswerable
question to those who assume
that the purpose of [a] the required park is
the same with that of Commons,
Squares, play grounds and gardens;
[or that it is for the improvement
of the real estate of a city.]
or that its place and bounds must
be determined with a view to the
improvement in value of real estate
or to the special advantage in
any way of those who are to live]

The question is a grave
one. A reservation of several
hundred acres [neces] any where in the outer
parts of a town, ordinarily [means]

[that [it is] its purpose to make provision for any form of recreation that may
at any time be in fashion and [provisions] a place for which
may any year be in demand by any considerable number
of living people.]

[carries with it] involves a considerable interruption
of streets, [and] necessarily
compelling [business] traffic of all sorts to
[be turned away from its direct lines]
be carried round it, [and] thus
putting a tax on [all] the business of
the people.
How [is] was this common course of
park commissions, then, to be justified?
The answer, only, by assuming that it [serves]
would serve a compensatory purpose.
No such compensatory purpose 
has ever been suggested
except 

[that we have assumed 
we have assumed.
Plainly the purpose is to
establish as nearly as practicable a sufficient scape of
natural scenery to enable [the vis]
those coming into to feel that they have
escaped from [the city] town surroundings
[and are] This purpose carries with it
(in book)-Only incidentally
g? &c.]excitements and disturbances, the following
supposition may be considered.
¶That for convenience of discussing
the subject [ing means of restricting the evil
question this to be apprehended in want of a better,
thus to be feared] the word park came
to be used as the name [of a] for a suggested reservation
of ground near a city in which
when properly prepared its future people might yet find some
notable degree of the quieting, soothing,
tranquilizing influence of expanded rural scenery, [of such rural
scenery undefiled and unsophys?
scenery expanded
rural scenery of expansive scape and undefined 
limits.]

It may be further supposed
that the minds [preparing these laws
have seen the difficulties lying]
by which these laws establishing
Park Commissions have been prepared foresaw the difficulties
standing between them and the end they had in view which would be
first, in local and personal jealousies
and second, in obstacles to 
[and in the difficulty of] getting
the busy population of a great city
to keep distant and unsubstantial ends in view; ends to be fully accomplished
only by the slow growth of trees and by long processes of preparation.

[to look as cleary as in forms such
a reservation it would be necesary
to the interests of
to what would were likely to be the needs of the city
in future years and that the
bills for acts laws were framed accordingly.
[Supposing such an intention to have existed]
Supposing such considerations to have
influenced the framing of the law, the first commissioners
appointed under [the Acts] it more likely
to be must to have fully adopted it 
the intentions with which it originated. Those who
[fully. It is to be considered then, that]
had been active in the agitation for
it and who were willing to pursue the
object further without ? compensation.]
Break

Supposing such considerations
to have influenced the enactment
of [the] a law and [that] those
[a who for them no] who from
regard to these reasons had been
most active in the agitation for it [to
have] and who were able and willing
to serve in the administration
of it, without pecuniary compensation, to have been appointed
commissioners, their first important
action was likely to
[be] show the influence upon
them of [such] the same considerations.
[It has occurred accordingly]
Under these circumstances it would naturally occur
that the first important movement
of [any] a Park Commission [has
looked] would look to the acquisition for [the] a city
of a bodySupposing such considerations
to have influenced the framing of
the law, those who had been
active in the agitation for it
and who were willing and able
to serve as Commissioners [under]
under it, wereT. L. L. 2

[Department of city administration, while it appears to be a firmly 
established institution, is of such recent introduction that [its value] 
it is nowhere yet to be fairly judged by its works.  [The first] To show this we may remind you that the 
definite undertaking of your Commission, that of the Fens, was 
entered upon thirteen years ago.]  The territory to be dealt with 
was comparatively small, hardly exceeding a hundred acres in 
extent.  A million dollars has already been expended upon it, but [to 
this day] the larger part of all the work done has been that of 
grading operations and road-making; that is to say, chiefly the 
disposition of raw materials [to remain] which have been so placed that they will be permanently concealed beneath the 
intended finished surface.  Anything pleasing[ant] to look upon 
that is to come from all your outlay will come as the results 
[of certain] not to be obtained of plantings and sowings which plantings and sowings 
are yet incomplete, and which, when complete, will have cost but a 
trifling fraction of your total outlay.  There are [very] but few of 
all the citizens of Boston, not probably one in a thousand, who have had such training as is necessary to enable a judgment 
of the slightest value to be formed today upon the question of what 
there results are to be.  [And among a hundred of those best 
qualified for the duty, the judgment of one half of them might 
differ considerably from that of the other half.

Obviously, there is nothing to be seen as yet, after eleven 
years from which a citizen, ordinarily well-informed and intelligent, 
can form a fair judgment as to the design of this work, 
or as to the economy with which the operations have been directed.]


T. L. L. 3

[And we may say that we have known no other community in 
which the state of the case in this respect could have been 
expected to be as generally appreciated as it has been in that 
of Boston.  [We have been surprised at] The patience and forbearance 
with which the tedious progress of operations in the Fens 
has been generally regarded is not generally to be unknown.]

It is true that this has been, in some degree, an extreme 
case; the amount of preparatory work required having been unusual.  
We have cited it but to exhibit more distinctly, by an 
instance acknowledged to be extreme, a difficulty which more or 
less formidably stands everywhere before the Park Department 
of city governments, and which, if the Commissioners are to earn 
a respectable success, [has to be met manfully.] is apt to be not a little trying to their manhood.

[[It may, perhaps,] be more fully [set forth] shown in this way.

For a long time after the appointment of a Board of Park 
Commissioners, the community whose servants they are is pervaded 
in a singular degree with vague, confused, incoherent and inconsistent 
notions of [the nature of] the benefits which are to come 
to it from the Commissioners' work.  [Large number of it] As [?] shall show later large numbers will 
have expectations widely conflicting with the expectations of 
other large numbers.  There is no other public office in the 
United States concerning the essential [use and] and peculiar use, and the reason for the 
existence of which there is as little clear, common understanding 
and intelligent agreement.  
[Such public opinion as exists 
being thus divided] Diverse opinions existing as to what should be expected, it necessarily 
occurs that on whatever view of its duty a Park Commission 
may act, its action cannot be that which many will have expected ]¶ The community being persuaded at
the outset, as we have said, not
only with naive and confused
but with inconsistent and conflicting
ideas of what a Park Commission
[is to do for it] is to do, it necessarily
means that on whatever [side]
view of its duty a Park Commission
shall act, its action cannot be
that which many will have expected

T. L. L.  4

[of it]; cannot fail, consequently, to cause disappointment.  [And]
 ¶ [d]Disappointments with what a Commission has done are the more
likely to be felt, for the reason that much the larger part of
its entire work is often [as in the case we have cited] preparatory
work, of no value in its immediately observable results.
Before the intent of this preparatory work can, in any
important degree, be realized; that is to say, the forces of
nature must have been operating, for a series of years, upon
the basis which results from it.  During the preparatory and
[period] the growing periods, those to whom the immediate results have not been a
surprise are much less apt to express their views, either personally or collectively, than those
to whom they [are a] promise disappointment.  [Remonstrances, memorials
and petitions [often come] from the latter are often addressed to Park Commissions, for the latter
purpose.]

We recall, [no] in fact, not a single instance in which any number of citizens
have united to testify [to Commissioners] their satisfaction with
the[ir] work of a Park Commission, but many in which committees, deputations and delegations
claiming to represent an important element of public
opinion, have appeared to [represent] express dissatisfaction with it.  Sometimes
[they] those so appearing have been formidable in numbers and have assumed a threatening
attitude.  In several cities the majority of the newspapers
and of the City Council, assuming to represent public opinion,
have done all that was possible to place obstructions in
the way of the Commission[;].  In one case, the Commission has been
unable to proceed in its duty until it had obtained an order of
Court compelling the Mayor and City  Council to abandon the positionT. L. L. 5

they had taken.  And it may be worth while to mention 
that the results of the resolution and perseverance of the 
Commission in this case was, a few years later, a degree of 
popularity for it that was almost burdensome, a tendency being evident 
to [place] give it undesirable responsibilities. [ upon it.]
It is noticeable that when organized bodies of citizens 
ask a hearing from a Park Commission, it is nearly always with 
a purpose, often an avowed purpose, [sometimes hidden,] to induce it to take 
some action for the benefit specifically of a [comparatively] 
small subdivision of all the people of the city, as of the 
owners of a particular body of land, or of the practitioners of 
a particular method of recreation.  In the latter case, especially, 
an assumption as to the duty of the Commission often 
appears, for which there is [not the slightest] no warrant.
Numbers of citizens in every community are disposed to 
find recreation in methods [entirely] different from those preferred 
by others.  Means having been provided by a Park Commission[s] 
for certain methods of recreation, [the assumption appears] 
it is assumed that justice requires that those who do not use these means 
should be provided with other means; [that it is] as if it is more simply a question 
of the numbers desiring [to engage in] any form of recreation 
whether provisions for recreation in that form should be 
supplied by the Commission [at the expense of the city].  Very intelligent men and 
good citizens have often taken this ground[, but it must have 
been] without considering what it involved.  In Spain, city 
governments make provision for the recreation of their people 
by bull fights; in Mexico, by cock fights.  [; provisions for neither 
of which forms of recreation would these citizens think ]


T. L. L. 6

[desirable to be made by a Park Commission, if even a majority 
of a community should desire them.]  There is no limit to the 
variety of forms of recreation for which, under such a view of 
their duty, Park Commissioners might be required to make provision; 
no limit to the spaces of ground, or the drafts on their 
financial resources that they might be asked to devote to these 
forms.
The late Mr. Barnum once sought permission to occupy a 
part of the finished ground of [the Central Park of New York,] a park,
promising to give an exhibition that would be many-fold more 
attractive than anything the Commissioners had to show for all 
they had spent upon it.  There [is] was not the least doubt that he 
could easily have kept this promise .  But the Commissioners 
were of the opinion that in assuming [that] it [was] to be their duty to 
favor whatever would add to the attractions, or increase the 
recreation, of the people on the Park, Mr. Barnum misconceived 
the nature of their business.
When a bill was before the British parliament, providing 
that the practice of hanging certain classes of criminals "in 
chains", leaving their [bodies] remains exposed on high gibbets for years, [until by decay their bones 
fell out], remonstrances were received, in which it was stated 
that as executions of this order were usually made beyond the [outside of]
[large towns, but at a distance from dwellings, the edifying]
immediate outskirts of towns, the spectacle of the decaying bodies
[spectacle of the rotting bodies was a constant attraction to]
was an attraction which constantly led town's people to take long walks 
[the townspeople, who were thus led to take healthfully recreative] 
in the country whereby they obtained healthful recreation.  
[walks in the country.]  [No doubt a public execution in] Probably the execution of a criminal 
in a public park [Central Park] would even now attract more people to it than anything thatT. L. L. 7

Mr. Barnum could [offer] have offered.  
[But Mr. Barnum would not 
have contended that it was desirable 
to make a park attractive 
by providing such 
a form of recreation.]
Again, arguments are often addressed to Park Commissioners 
by honorable men and good citizens, in favor of measures by 
which their own convenience or the value of their private property 
may be advanced, [in a manner that can only be accounted for] such as then gentlemen would not
[as growing out] think of using but for the effect upon them of a long established custom, by which a healthy 
exercise of public opinion is impeded.  More than a hundred 
streets have been laid out leading to the boundaries of one of 
our American Parks, and the owners of property in more than half 
of these streets have, at different times, [thought [contended] that they 
were entitled to] sought to have entrance roads made between them and the 
roads that have been laid out in the Park, [regardless of the] nearly always some
[fact that these Park roads would have been differently laid out] 
in nearly every case, had approaches to them been required, 
other than those that had been provided for.]  hereby always some 
of the owners of property adjoining a park rate ground that the park should 
be laid at and managed with special regard to their private convenience 
and [?] of their private tastes.  [Had the half 
of the demands made upon the Commission in this respect been 
yielded to, the landscape character of their Park would have 
been greatly changed, and this at grievous loss to the community.]

We say that the arguments commonly used in such cases 
would not be employed, as they often are, by honorable men and 
good citizens, were it not for the effect [upon them] of an established 
custom impeding the exercise of fair judgment in the 
premises.  We refer to the fact that the planning of the 
greater part of the outgrowths of most of our [more] rapidly 
grown cities has hitherto been devised with undisguised primary 
reference, not to the permanent convenience and interest of 


T. L. L. 8

the general future community of the city, but to what, in each 
case, a limited number of persons having an interest more or 
less in common in some particular body of outlying land, may 
[agree] have agreed to consider the arrangement best suited to their own private 
convenience and pecuniary interest at the moment the plan 
is to be determined, [that moment being, it may happen, one of 
commercial depression, or one of extreme inflation and booming.]  
It even occurs that the plan upon which an important part of a 
city is to be built for centuries afterwards may thus be hastily 
fixed y one man; the owner, for example, of what has been 
a large gar on the boundary of the city.  It may happen that 
this man is wholly incompetent for the task; that he is [without 
capital, except in his farm; that he is] at the moment in a state of [painful] 
financial embarrassment, and pressed to get his land into market 
with [the smallest] an entirely inadequate outlay of thought and money; it may be that 
he is a spendthrift, or a speculator with a gambling disposition, 
[and] it often happens that his motives are the exact reverse of those which would 
be adopted by a courageous public servant, moving with enlightened, deliberate 
forecast of the lasting interests of the city as a whole.  
Illustrations of almost incredibly reckless, selfish, time-serving 
perversity in this way may be found in some of our 
younger, most prosperous and most promising great cities; in 
San Francisco, for example, parts of which are laid out in a 
manner which could hardly have been more skilfully contrived, 
had the object of the contriver been to impose the greatest 
practicable inconvenience and the highest rates of taxationT. L. L. 9

upon all who were to inhabit the city for hundreds of years
afterwards.
   This custom has quite generally ruled in the outlying parts
of Boston from early days to this very year, when the wrong [of
it] and the folly of it [has] have been recognized in the appointment
of the Board of Survey.  It is impossible to estimate what it
has cost the city and what it has cost all whose business has
had, in any remote degree, to be done through the city.  Attempts
to palliate its evils by the introduction of streets of
connection to be carried through property already built upon
in accordance with ill-digested and desultory street plans of
the past, and in widening and making more direct streets so
planned, has already cost the city millions of dollars, and
as standards of convenience advance and the business parts of
the town are enlarged, must yet cost it many more millions.
It was a custom originating in a pioneer state of society, and
the ground upon which it has been generally maintained,  namely
that competition of private interests will secure, through
efforts to sell building lots, what is permanently most desirable
for the community, has, in thousands of instances, [been
demonstrated to be] proved a fallacy.
   The [bad] custom to which we have thus referred, so long and
so strongly established, of letting streets be laid out, not
with the wisest forecast that can be commanded of what will
best serve the [future] permanent interests of the growing city
as a whole, but with regard for what a small number of its population
may happen for the moment to think will most advance

T. L. L. 10

their individual fortunes; this [bad] custom, we say, has bred
a habit with the people of nearly all our cities, the tendency
of which needs to be recognized [and borne in mind] in order that
it may be understood in how slight a degree what are often
represented to be demonstrations of public opinion  really are so,
when considered relatively to the duty of a Park Commission,
and how little they represent, even as expressions of invididual
opinion, any real exercise of judgment upon the vital question
of that duty - the question of the future interests of the whole
body of the people concerned.
   Combinations of the property owners of particular districts
are often made and active measures taken in their behalf, sometimes
by attorneys employed for that purpose, avowedly in order
to exercise influence with reference to the plans of a Park
Commission.  We have [had experiences] known successively, in a single
city, [with] six separate and rival associations of this character,
each aiming to advance the value of real estate in a different
locality.  Each putting out of consideration the suggestion that the
Park Commission can be thinking of anything more important
than the immediate pecuniary interests of living individuals.
   In Chicago, the jealousy between competing real estate
interests has been such that the Legislature has been induced
to establish three [separate] rival Park Commissions, each operating
in the interest of a separate section.
   Now, when a Park Department fails to be moved by the representations
made to it by persons dissatisfied in any particular
with its course, it seldom happens that [many of] these
persons are led much better than before, to appreciate the
[controlling purposes of the] Commissioners' obligations to the
[The Park Commission of another city is formally divided into
four sections, each section being formed of members resident in a
distinct quarter of the city in order that the residents of no quarter may be able to
say that there is no one in the Board to advocate their interest.]
T. L. L. 11

community, and the difference in its position from that of 
those departments of a city government to which a citizen would 
apply if the pavement in front of his house, or the street 
lights or water supply, or the school-houses, or the means of 
protection against fire or burglars, of his neighbouhood were 
inadequate.  [Such] Not appreciating the real motives of the Commission such persons are[, therefore,] apt to account for 
their disappointment in some other way and they generally [do so 
in a manner] adopt a way that leads, after a few years, to the spreading 
abroad of an impression that a set of men have been unfortunately 
selected for park Commissioners [who are] of [a] peculiarly 
pragmatical, unaccommodating, self-sufficient and supercilious 
[disposition] personal habits.  There are few park commissions [in the United 
States] of more than two or three years standing, with regard to 
[members of which there have not been reports of this sort 
going about] which reports of this sort have not been rife.  Often they appear in debates of the city councils; 
yet oftener, in newspapers, and especially in newspapers that 
represent local divisions of [the] a city, [as the Harlem or Westchester 
districts of New York, or the eastern district of Brooklyn.  
And it frequently happens that assertions based on these reports
are given illogically as reasons for opposing measures of city 
or state legislation recommended by the Commissioners.]

We have 
so often, and in so many places, heard this imputation laid 
against men differing greatly from one another in personal 
[character] habits, that its error has been made [more] palpable to us, 
and observing that its spread has been countenanced by respectable 
men, we have been led to consider out of what it grows.


T. L. L. 12

Plainly it grows out of an assumption that the business 
of determining in what quarter of a city a public pleasure ground 
shall be formed, what lands shall be taken for it, how it shall 
be laid out, how approached, and how managed in all respects, 
is to be carried on in the same manner as is the business of 
laying out streets, extending water-mains and sewers, determining 
the sites for school-houses and engine-houses and most other 
matters of city government; that is to say, by regard for the 
immediate wants, and largely by regard for what may be though 
to be the immediate wishes of the citizens [of] at the moment occupying a particular 
district of the city.

We will presently show how [completely false] wrong such an idea 
of the duties of a Park Commission must be.  But first it may 
be well to note that, however strong a hold such an idea may 
have upon a man while he remains a citizen, it rarely happens 
that it [stays long] does not begin to fade away even after he assumes the duty and puts his 
mind practically to the [work] business of a Park Commission.

A striking instance of the different points of view that 
may be taken by citizens in their capacity as citizens, and 
citizens in their capacity as public servants, has been presented 
here in Boston, in connection with the question of the 
right of citizens to hold public meetings and deliver orations 
and [evangelical] exhortations within a certain area of the property 
placed in charge of the park Commissioners.  Since the 
first unanimous action of the Commissioners adverse to this 
claim, while the membership of the Commission has been three T. L. L. 13

times wholly changed, each new member, as he has had occasion 
to [renew] review the proceeding and determine his own duty to the 
community in the premises, has reached the same conclusion.  
Yet from the point of view of those who have been active in 
asserting the right, so unreasonable does this conclusion appear, 
that they can attribute it only to a disdainful disposition on 
the part of the Commissioners, and a propensity to the oppressive 
exercise of arbitrary power.  The case is the more remarkable 
for the reason that all other Park Commissioners of the 
country, so far as known to us, have been led to the same conclusion 
as that adopted by [those] the Commissions of Boston.

Such a difference between the point of view toward which 
Park Commissioners are generally drawn before they have been 
long engaged with their duties, and the points of view of those 
who wish to influence their action in various points of policy, 
is to be found in every city in which a Park Commission is 
moving with any notable vigor.

The fact at the bottom of [it] this difference is that while, as we observed 
in the beginning, the communities served by Park Commissioners 
remain for years pervaded to a singular degree with vague, incoherent, 
inconsistent and often conflicting ideas of the nature 
of the benefits that are to come to them from the work [provided 
for in the Acts constituting Park] of the Commissions, the [Park] Commissioners, 
themselves, whatever their state of mind previously, 
are, in a measure, compelled, in the exercise of their official 
functions, to [drift] be moving toward a theory in this respect that will 


T. L. L. 14

serve for working purposes; a theory that can be pursued with some [degree of] approach to consistency.

The first question of one seeking to [drift] move rightly in this 
respect necessarily is [as to] a question of the motive and intention of the 
Law.

[Let it be considered what he finds:]
Legislative action providing for a Park Commission[s] has been 
had in sixteen or more states of the Union, and in each of 
several of these, a number of such Commissions have been formed.

Under these Acts, as a general rule, a Park Commissioner 
is established in his position independently of City Councils, 
and for a period of several years; in some cases it has been 
five, in some, ten years.  He is allowed no salary, fee, perquisite 
or property advantage in any form because of his service 
as a Commissioner.  He is a representative of no district, 
ward, party, faction, or set of citizens, and is entitled to 
look specially after the interests of none.  In connection with 
others of his Board, he can cause the landed property and the 
homes of citizens to be taken from them against their will, and 
he can dispose of large funds which have been obtained by loans 
to be paid many years afterwards, and mainly by a body of taxpayers 
whose interests in the results of the operations which 
his Board directs, he has no right to sacrifice [from] out of regard to 
the interests or the demands, however presented and urged, of 
the living population.  He is, in this respect, a trustee, 
unpaid and, therefore, a trustee on honor, for persons unable T. L. L. 15

at present to stand for their own interests, and there is no 
duty resting upon him with such imperative moral force as that 
of protecting the general interests of the future population of 
his city as a whole from dangers to which they would be exposed 
were the business to be conducted on the Principles ordinarily 
ruling in the management of such other city business, [or] as that of the laying 
out of streets, paving, lighting, sewering and so on.

It is reasonable to assume that it would not have become 
customary to place Park Commissioners in a position so far differing 
from that of most other citizens given charge of city 
works, had there not been reason for thinking it necessary to 
the accomplishment of the purpose to be committed to them that 
they should act with a special independence of ordinary political, 
commercial, personal and social influences, and with a 
clear recognition of a special duty resting on them to consider 
questions to come before them from a different point of view 
from that ordinarily taken, or that can reasonably be expected 
to be taken by citizens generally, or by their representatives 
in City Councils elected for short terms, and for duties of a 
more general scope.

But although Park Commissioners are thus plainly assigned 
to a special duty, requiring them to act with unusual freedom 
from motives generally desirable to be operative with public 
officers, if a clear, concise working definition of that duty 
is looked for, it will be found in not one of all the acts of 
legislation that have been [taken] had on the subject

The title of the Act providing for a Park Commission commonly reads:  


T. L. L. 16

"An Act to provide for the establishment of a Public Park", 
or words equivalent to these, and it often happens that nowhere 
in the body of the Act is the purpose to be served by the Commission 
more definitively stated, or more precisely limited, 
than it is in these words.

What, then, in the eye of the Law is a Park?

The word has been used, with us, to cover nearly all sorts 
of spaces of public property about a town, which are not intended 
to be given to streets and buildings.  Among them are 
included spaces otherwise specifically known as Commons, Greens, 
Squares, Yards, Muster Fields, Play Grounds and Gardens.  
City governments have often established new grounds, classing 
them as parks, without resort to any such machinery as that of 
a Park Commission, and in many cases, as in Boston, when a Park 
Commission has been constituted, it has not been given charge 
of such grounds called parks as were previously existing, but these grounds have 
remained under the same management as before.  Even new grounds 
[of that character] additional "parks" have been acquired by a city while a Park Commission 
was in operation, and independently of it.  This being the 
case, it is reasonable to assume that the word park in an Act 
specially providing for such a Commission is not intended to 
charge it with the duty of supplying additional spaces for the 
same purposes with those of Commons, Greens, Squares, Yards, 
Muster Grounds, Play Grounds and Gardens, adequate provision for this purpose having already been made.

Nor is it reasonable to suppose that the word Park in the 
Acts constituting Park Commissions is intended to be applied, 
as is sometimes assumed, to places simply adapted to a display T. L. L. 17

of fine equipages and horses, or fashionable assemblages of any 
sort, or for trotting courses, or ponds for boating or skating, 
or arenas for public debates or addresses, or for ball-playing 
or other athletic exercises; for, if the object of obtaining 
spaces well adapted to be prepared for these purposes had been 
controlling, it would not have led to the choice of sites of 
such a character as those that, under these acts, have almost anywhere been taken.  Better sites 
for such purposes could nearly always have been obtained, than 
than those that have been selected.  Whatever the site of 
Franklin Park in Boston, for example, was good for, it was 
certainly not one that would have been chosen simply from regard 
to any of these purposes.  More suitable ground for [these purposes] most of them 
was to be had at less cost within a hundred yards of the site 
taken.  [It] This [?] around was not overlooked.  It was not thrown out without a 
reason.

As to the recorded definition of the word, Blackstone says:  
"A park is an enclosed chase, extending only over a man's own 
ground."  Manwood says:  "A park is a place for privilege for 
wild beasts of venery."  Lord Bacon says: " We have parks and 
inclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds."  Coming to literary 
usage, Shakespeare says: "How are we packed and bounded in 
a pale.  A little herd of England's timorous deer".  Johnson's 
only definition of the word is a piece of ground enclosed and 
stored with wild beasts."  And down nearly to the time when the 
first American Park Commission was constituted, there were 
hardly any places distinctively known as public parks of cities 


T. L. L. 18

that had not originally been enclosures for the keeping of 
deer[;] for hunting; none which had ever, in any comprehensively 
organized, systematic, provident way, been formed for any other 
purpose.  Of the parks of London, Hyde and Regent's, St. James's 
and Green, Greenwich and Richmond, had all been enclosures for 
deer.  So had the grounds of corresponding public use in Paris, 
Berlin, Munich and Vienna.  There were herds of deer in most of 
them, and in several [they] deer were still occasionally hunted.

But it is to be considered that a body of land adapted 
to be a preserve for deer is likely to be one of considerable 
extent, and to include broad, quiet, fertile glades of turf for 
pasturage, with scattered trees, in the shade of which the 
animals will lie during the heat of summer days, and spaces of 
close-grown wood and obscuring thickets to which, as coverts, 
their instincts lead them at times to retreat.  This, in fact, 
is the topographical character of the parks of England to which 
Blackstone's definition of the term refers.  Consequently, the 
term is, by a secondary usage, often applied to bodies of land of 
similar topographical character, although these are not used for 
the keeping of deer.  This is a common significance of the word 
in [some of] our Western States and the usage is recognized, for 
instance, in the laws of the State of Colorado.  The Blue-grass 
pasture lands of Kentucky are often described as natural parks.  
They are so, not because they are good places in which to drive 
and ride and play ball or skate or sail, but because of certain 
special qualities of agreeable pastoral and sylvan scenery.T. L. L. 19

The distinctive parks that have been prepared by Park Commissions 
answer well to such a topographical definition in New York, 
Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, St. Louis 
and several other cities.

But although this fact is not without a significance of 
some value, it doe not go far to define the purpose for which 
Park Commissions have been given their peculiar powers.

It may be asked, then, whether there is anything in the 
circumstances under which the series of Acts constituting Park 
Commissions have been enacted from which a reasonable inference 
can be drawn as to the purpose leading to their enactment?

Upon this point, the following suggestion [claims consideration] 
is submitted:

The first movement in the United States leading on to the 
appointment of a Park Commission began forty years ago (1852)  
Since that time, and mostly within the last twenty years, nearly 
every considerable prosperous town in the country, from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to the Gulf, has asked and 
obtained state legislation for such a Commission, and action 
of corresponding import has been taken by Congress with regard 
to our Capital city of Washington.

Now a truly portentous circumstance in the history of mankind 
has, in this same period of forty years, been growingly 
manifest.  This is a tendency of people to come together, as 
never before, in great towns, and of great towns to depart much 
more than before from the old fashions of close building which 
had their origin in necessities of military defence and difficulties 


T. L. L. 20

of transportation[,] before wheeled vehicles came into 
general use, and to spread out by establishing much broader 
streets and blocks.

Of our American towns in which this double tendency has 
been most marked, nearly all that were much more than trading 
posts or frontier villages had already, before our first Park 
Commission was established, acquired various small public 
grounds.  Most of these, also, had been prepared for certain 
uses to be made of them; walks had been made through them, trees 
planted and objects introduced which were regarded as ornamental.  
There were, for example, twenty such grounds, often 
indiscriminately classed as parks, in the city of New York; 
and Philadelphia, Baltimore and Savannah were celebrated for 
the numbers of them which they possessed.  There were, in some 
cities, other grounds used a play-grounds, and others yet as muster 
and parade grounds.The need of anything more than was thus 
provided in the way of public grounds had not, [forty] fifty years ago, 
been felt, or any coming need for it practically anticipated.

There were,  in fact, at that time, but one or two American 
towns from which it was not possible for people, when so inclined, 
to escape in less than half an hour into regions of comparatively 
simple, fresh, wholesome, spacious, quiet rural scenery.  
By going a little further, it was generally practicable for 
those roaming forth to leave the high-road and make their way 
pleasantly through meadows, or along thickets, or into the depths 
of woods.  And, although the compactly built parts of these towns 
were then very much smaller than now, and in the larger parts of T. L. L. 21

them there was yet much garden ground and considerable areas 
not built upon, it was well known to many of their people, as a 
result of personal experience, that to get clear out of them 
into the open country often had upon many a most soothing and 
refreshing effect.  This, even if the escape from the town was 
for no more than half an hour; much more, when half a day could 
be given to such an excursion, and especially was this recognized 
to be the case with respect to invalids and convalescents, 
provided they were not subject to too much exposure and fatigue.  
It was a common thing for physicians to order their patients to 
be taken from their sick rooms and given a drive in the country, 
and marvelous effects were sometimes reported of such excursions.

But as [an effect] a result of the urbanizing tendency to which we 
have referred, there has since come somewhat suddenly, for nearly 
every thriving town, a time when, if anything of this old 
privilege remained for its busy people, it had grown to be obvious 
to all thinking men that it would not remain long.  In 
many cases, indeed, it soon came to pass that nothing like a 
pleasant country road was left near them.  Those which had 
formerly had an agreeable picturesque character had generally 
been widened and straightened.  In the process, their sylvan 
borders had been destroyed, and to those disposed to wander 
away from them to enjoy such reality as remained in these 
neighborhoods, warnings had been posted that if they did so, 
they would be treated as trespassers.  Even outlooks to the 
right and left from these roads began to be cut off, miles from 
the town, by close fences and roadside buildings.  These circumstances, 


T. L. L. 22

with the increasing use of the wheelways by all 
manner of vehicles, and the frequent interruption of passage on 
the sidewalks by operations of building, sewering and like operations, 
left nothing available of the pleasure that had before been had in a short 
outing from the town, such as a merchant or a laborer might 
take after his day's work was done.

This state of things having already begun to appear in 
the suburbs of several of our large towns, and thinking men, 
accustomed to exercise, even in small measure, anything like 
statesmen-like forecast, having been thus led to apprehend that 
the effect of railroads and other recent developments affecting 
commerce, would yet further increase the difficulty with which, 
in after years, the people of a city would find any ready escape from its 
confinement, excitements and disturbances, the following supposition 
may be considered.

That for convenience of discussing the subject, the word 
park, in want of a better, came to be used as the name for a 
suggested reservation of ground near a city, in which, when 
properly prepared, its future people might yet find some notable 
degree of the quieting, soothing, tranquilizing influence of 
expanded rural scenery.

It may be further supposed that the minds by which these 
laws establishing Park Commissions have been prepared, foresaw 
the difficulties standing between them and the end which they had 
in view, which would lie, first, in local and personal jealousies; 
and, second, in obstacles to getting the busy population T. L. L. 23

of a great city to keep distant and unsubstantial ends in view, 
ends to be fully accomplished only by the slow growth of trees 
[and by] after long processes of preparation.

Supposing such considerations to have influenced the enactment 
of a law, and those who[, from regard to these reasons,] had 
been most active in the agitation for it, and who were able 
and willing to serve in the administration of it, without pecuniary 
compensation, to have been appointed Commissioners, their 
first important action was likely to show the influence upon 
them of the same considerations.

Under these circumstances, it would naturally occur that 
the first important movement of a Park Commission would look 
to the acquisition for a city of a body of land many times 
larger than would be necessary for a park, using the word in 
the loose sense in which it had been before applied to Commons, 
Squares, Play Grounds and Gardens.  Just so it has happened.  
[I]On a number of cases, the land so obtained [having] [has], as the very 
first step in the work of a Park Commission, has had an extent of 
over a thousand acres; and in several, of over five hundred.

It has often been asked why the purpose for which a Park 
Commission is constituted would not be better served by establishing 
five grounds, each of a hundred acres, and so scattered 
about the suburbs of a town that none of its people would be 
at a great distance from it?  The question is a grave one.  
A reservation of several hundred acres anywhere in the outer 
parts of a town, ordinarily involves a considerable interruption 
of streets, necessarily compelling traffic of all sorts to be 


T. L. L. 24

carried around it, thus putting a tax on the business of the 
people.

How was this common course of Park Commissioners, then, 
to be justified?

Only, we answer, by assuming that it would serve a compensating[ory] 
purpose.

No such compensating[ory] purpose has ever been suggested, 
except that of providing the people of a town with a place in 
which they could escape better than they could in a smaller 
one from the sight and hearing of crowds, the jar and bustle 
of streets and the vision of buildings; where they could find 
the soothing influence upon the nerves and the effect upon the 
mind and body through the imagination of what, because no one 
succeeds in explaining it satisfactorily, we are apt to call 
the charm of natural scenery.  To secure the highest degree 
practicable of this influence, it is necessary to secure variety 
of incident subordinate to broad effects of light and shade, 
extended perspectives and the softening action of distance upon 
the tints of verdure and foliage.  To accomplish such a purpose, 
large spaces are indispensable.is at all afflicted by 
ment for other services n
to Mr Warner.  I hope that 
upon reconsideration you will 
conclude that the amt of $550 
remains justly due to me as I must 
[certainly] maintain [it to be]. 
Yours rspctly.[*IV]                  
[M*]
[*[Fragments Relating to Boston Parks]*]

Boston

Letter to Thomas L. Livermore
Review of relation of Park Comm. To Public
Origins of Park Comm.
Duties of.
Attitude of Public Towards

Parks,
Definition
Uses
Necessity of in large Towns
Experience of N.Y.

Letter to T. L. Livermore

Relations of Park Commissions to Public 
Back Bay Fens as example of work 
of large proportions where pleasing finish is 
small part of outlay.  

Park Com. often harshly criticized by those 
who do not understand the motives of a park

Aims of a Park not primarily amusement.  
Attempts to use the park for private gains 
or to benefit some particular section.

Definition of Park
Growth of Towns
Necessity of Parks in large Towns 
Must provide a country scene 
with absence of city bldgs etc. 

Experience of N.Y.



The Honble Thomas L. Livermore
Chairman of the Board of 
Park Commissioners of Boston.

Dear Sir; Having had part in 
the counsels of twenty boards of Park Commissioners 
and having sought to be informed 
of the listing of others we propose in 
this paper to record a few general 
observations upon the institution of 
the Park Commission as a department 
of American Municipal Administration.

First; it is to be noted that for a[view is that for a] every time after
after the establishment of a Board of Park Commissioners, the community [where servants they are is pervaded] 
to be served by it is pervaded in a singular degree with vague, confused, incoherent and inconsistent ideas of the duties to be performed by the board and of the benefits to be expected 
to result from its work. As we shall show later, [large numbers] many citizens have expectations [of it] widely differing from 
the expectations of [other large numbers of it] many other citizens. 
We know of no other public office 
in the United States concerning the 
essential and peculiar use and the 
reason for the existence, of which, there is as little clear, common, understanding
and intelligent agreement. 
The difficulty this occurring remains the longer and is the more [aggravated
because the]

valid for a reason that [was]
may best be shown by reference
to the first of the works 
set about thirteen years ago by your own 
commission [ago]. This is that of the Fens.The Honorable Thomas L. Livermore
Chairman of the Board
of Park Commissioners
of Boston

Dear Sir:  It has occurred
to us that with relation to
matters pending in your Board it
might be desirable that we should lay
before it some observations and comments
upon Park Commissions collectively.
We have had part professionally
in the counsels of more than twenty 
boards of these Commissions, we have
followed with some care the experience
and the drift of judgment, the operations
and the results, not only of these but
of a number of others.  While no two of
these are constituted exactly alike or
have quite similar conditions to deal
with, all have certain purposes, and
certain problems and difficulties 

South Boston Parks
Relations re Boston Park
Commission & how to
deal with them

[* J. C. O.          Important
[?IV?]  Boston Muddy ?

from Miss [?Brellard? ?Bullard?] *]

valid for a reason that [soon]
may best be shown by reference
to the first of the works 
set about thirteen years ago by your own [com]
Commission.
[ago] This is that of the Fens.Boston -- Muddy River
X Brookline -- Parks
(which cover Brookline 
part of the Parkway)