Frederick Law Olmsted Subject File Parks Pawtucket, R.I. 1888163, IV Pawtucket PR
PLAN OF
Public Recreation Grounds
FOR THE
CITY OF PAWTUCKET.PLEASANT STREET
PART OF RIVERSIDE CEMETERY
TAFT ST. 
MERCY ST.
TIDEWATER STREET
SEEKONK RIVER
PROSPECT STREETSTREET
SCHOOL ST
WOODLAND STREET
PROSPECT STREET
THE LAWN
POND STREETPLAN FOR A SYSTEM OF
RECREATION GROUNDS
FOR THE CITY OF
PAWTUCKET, R.I.PROSPECT
SOUTH PLAYGROUND

THE LAWN
THE GROVE
NORTH PLAYGROUND

[?SECOND] STREET

SOUTH BEND STREET
HAMMOND'S POND

P. R. JONES, DEL:  

Heliotype Printing Co. BostonPLAN 
OF
PUBLIC RECREATION GROUNDS
FOR THE 
CITY OF PAWTUCKET.

REPORT
OF 
F.L. & J.C. OLMSTEAD
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS.

BOSTON:
PRESS OF T.E. MARVIN & SON
1888.REPORT.
The Honorable A.H. GOODWIN, Mayor.
SIR,--We were asked last spring to examine and report
to you upon the fitness of the Dunnell homestead property,
east of Prospect Street, for conversion into a Public Recreation
Ground. We soon afterwards advised you that while
the place offered some rare advantages for the purpose,
which it would be a pity for the City to lose the opportunity
of securing, it was not likely, in our opinion, that a recreation
ground to be formed within the limits suggested would prove
lastingly satisfactory.
We have since extended our examination to adjoining
properties and have devised a scheme for a ground of more
diversified character than it would be practicable to form
within the limits originally in view.
This scheme we shall now have the honor to lay before
you, and in doing so, we feel that it is our first duty to give
reasons for advising an undertaking to be much enlarged,
which it is probable has in its original form been considered
by many of your best citizens a much larger one than it would 
be wise and prudent for the city to enter upon.
It was formerly a common saying that no people were so
little given to recreation as those of the United States, and
among the people of the United States none as little as the
people of New England.
The saying continues to be repeated by foreign critics, and
few even among ourselves have come to think how strongly
certain symptoms of our social life point to a different conclusion.
Among them may be mentioned the number of
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excursions and picnics in which people, not only of our large 
cities, but of our villages and farming communities, engage, 
and often, under the lead of clergymen, in religious and 
benevolent organizations; the vast extent of summer vacation 
travel, and the steamboats, railway trains, and hotels 
that are managed with reference to its accommodation; the 
development, and the number and value of horses that are 
chiefly valuable as means of recreation; and the number of 
people who are to be seen driving, riding, and walking for 
pleasure wherever, near our towns, suitable roads have been 
provided; the number who are willing to pay liberally for a 
good opportunity to observe various forms of out-of-door 
sports, and the organizations and appliances that exist for gratifying 
them.  The change of customs that has occurred in such 
respects as these within the period of a single generation, and 
the continued advance of this change from year to year is so 
great, that men who have travelled the world over may find 
reason to doubt whether a larger proportion of any other people 
are, at the present day, more ready to make use of such 
means of recreation as come in their way, and the use of 
which is not violently incompatible with their notions of 
morality and decorum, than those of the United States, and 
among those of the United States than the people of New 
England.

The inclination being what it is, that means of gratifying it 
should be opened which may be pursued healthfully, without 
temptation to extravagance and intemperance, without undue 
withdrawal of energies from the most serious duties of life, 
is a matter of hardly less importance than that the rising generation 
should be well schooled.

Various forms of recreation can be, and are provided, for 
the people of towns by commercial enterprise, or by clubs; 
as, for example, those of race-courses, base-ball exhibitions, 
concerts, museums, and minstrel shows.  There are other 


5

means better adapted to be used, ordinarily with advantage 
to health and to all the interests of the community, which 
never have been and never will be commercially provided.  
Suitable provision for these is to be had only in the same 
way that an adequate supply of water, removal of filth, protection 
of property, guards against the spread of fires and 
contagious diseases, and various other modern conveniences 
of town life are to be had; that is to say, by public institutions, 
the cost of which is met by taxation.  We call such 
institutions by the name of parks, but as this word is often 
applied to city properties that do not provide adequately for 
the recreation in question, and which are to be better described 
as gardens, greens, or commons, it is necessary to 
state the distinctive characteristics of a park, as the word 
must be used in this discussion.

By a park is meant a place on which the eye will find 
something more to enjoy than a series of pretty objects, such 
as, for example, are to be looked for in a garden; something 
more than an expanse of fine turf with pleasant verdure, and 
blooming borders, such as is to be looked for in a lawn.  This 
something more is best described as scenery, and as scenery 
of a kind that will impressively contrast with everything that 
may be called the scenery of streets and buildings, or of places 
from within which buildings and street scenes are to be observed; 
scenery that will thus contrast with that of the 
town, because its elements are prevailingly natural in aspect, 
are naturally disposed, and are standing in such association 
and relation, one with all, and all with each, that wherever 
people go within it, and in whatever direction they look, the 
contrasting impression deepens.  In addition to this, a park 
is a place in which people find facilities for observing recreation 
in a variety of ways adapted to be enjoyed by those of 
different habits, moods, tastes, condition of health and vigor, 6

and who require different forms of relief, according to the 
different manner in which their organizations are affected 
by their several ordinary occupations and modes of life. A 
park is a place in which these various facilities are offered in 
such manner that the use, and the means to the use, of no 
one of them, is destructive of the value of the facilities offered
for any other. What needs to be most emphasized in this
last particular, is that these other means of recreation must 
not be so provided in a park as to be destructive of its 
natural scenery. The reason that this must be emphasized 
is that, in all parks that have been proved to be of much 
public value, the number of people who use them in the 
simple manner of walking, driving, and riding, or who spend 
much time in them, seated, and looking upon that before 
them, far exceeds the number of those who engage in games, 
and plays, or any or all other forms of recreation.

It will be seen that, to provide the various conditions thus 
laid down as needful to be found in a park, no small degree 
of organization is necessary, and that in choosing grounds 
for a park it is very important that advantages of one kind 
that may be offered in a particular site are not allowed to 
distract attention from others equally desirable.

Among the class of facts by which the change of the 
public disposition in respect to recreation during the last 
thirty years is shown, one of the more notable is this; that 
while in 1850 there was not a park that would distantly 
answer to the above description in the United States, at 
the taking of the census in 1880, statistics were collected of 
forty bodies of land under the head of parks, the properties 
of cities, each of sufficient extent, at least, to justify the 
presumption that they had been acquired with a purpose of 
providing rural scenery for the recreation of their people. 
The outlay made in these thirty years for such parks was not


7

noted in the census returns, but it certainly exceeded thirty 
million dollars. That of the city of New York, alone, moving 
first and least circumspectly, had already been fifteen million.

At first, it was difficult to believe that the outlays for 
them were not of an almost criminally reckless, spendthrift, 
and extravagant character. But as soon as the objects of a 
park undertaking have come to be realized, even in a moderate 
degree, it has turned out to be a matter of regret with 
the taxpayers, in nearly every case, that the scheme had not 
been larger and more comprehensive, even if to have made 
it so would have largely added to its cost. In several cities, 
as in New York, Baltimore, Bridgeport, Buffalo and St. 
Louis, measures have accordingly been taken, already, either 
to enlarge the first park acquired, or to form additional 
larger parks, or both. New York, since its first park 
of eight hundred acres came into use, has, with a general 
approval of its taxpayers, bought four thousand acres for
 additional parks. In not a single instance, after a fairly
 well-planned park has been acquired, have those who originally 
opposed it as an extravagance, failed to generally 
acknowledge that it was worth more than it had cost.

Such a change of opinion cannot be due simply to personal 
experiences of pleasure through the use of the parks. It 
can be explained only on the supposition that, wherever it 
is situated, in or near a city, a well-ordered park brings to 
the great body of its taxpayers a tangible return approximately 
measurable in money. The fact seems to be that 
such a park adds so much to the pleasure of life in a city 
that many people are reconciled to remain in it with their 
property who would otherwise move away, and many more 
are drawn to come to it with their property who would, but 
for the park, have remained elsewhere. Thus, not only is 
the value of real estate advanced and the trade of the town
 increased, but the amount of property available for city taxa-8

[taxa]tion is augmented more than enough to make the cost of 
the park a financially profitable undertaking.

In view of all the facts to which we have thus referred, it 
must be considered reasonably certain that before many 
years such provisions for out-of-doors recreations, as are
found in the better class of parks, will be regarded as a 
necessary part of the equipment of all cities, and that they 
will be provided on a scale proportionate to the population. 
This being the case, it is important that cities not provided 
with parks, should move promptly to secure the best opportunities 
offered for obtaining suitable sites for them. Delay 
in this respect is nearly always very costly. As evidence of 
this, we may state that we have been professionally consulted 
upon schemes of more than twenty public parks, 
most of which have been afterwards successfully carried out, 
but not in one single instance have we failed to hear from 
those moving in the matter, expressions of regret that they 
had been so slow to move; or to be pointed to sites that 
would have been much better for the city to take had it 
been ready to do so a few years before.

In one case, discussion of a project to obtain an admirable 
body of land was prolonged until its market value had so 
much advanced that its advocates were constrained to give it 
up. This was twenty years ago. There is not another city 
in the country that would benefit more by a park, but it yet 
remains without any, and could not now obtain as good a site 
for many times the price which was then thought to be 
excessive.

About the same time, a certain excellent site was proposed 
to be taken for a park in another city, its estimated 
value being then five hundred dollars an acre. The project 
failed because of local jealousies. This year we have been 
consulted in regard to a new movement for a park in the 
same city and found the site first selected cut up by streets


9

and much built upon. We were informed that it could not 
now be bought at ten thousand dollars an acre.

In several cases where we have examined bodies of land,
proposed to be taken for parks, we have found reason for 
advising that certain bordering lands should be added to 
them. In every instance where this advice has not been 
taken, experience has made the mistake of disregarding it so 
plain that the land has afterwards been bought at a price 
many times greater than would have been necessary had it
been promptly acted upon.

One other fact in our experience may, at this point, best 
be stated. We have never found a suitable site for a park 
for any city near its centre of population. The difficulty in 
every park project has to be met of an opposition to it growing 
out of sectional jealousies. These have often postponed 
action for years at enormous cost through the loss of opportunities 
originally opened, or through an advance in the 
value of land to be taken. In other cases, it has been found 
necessary, in order to appease such jealousies, to form two 
parks where one at much less cost would have been better. 
The principal park of Brooklyn, Bridgeport, New Haven, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Buffalo, Montreal, Chicago, St. 
Louis, and San Francisco, respectively, is in an outskirt of 
the city at an average distance from its centre of about three 
miles.

In view of the facts that we have referred to, we cannot 
doubt that the city of Pawtucket will find it necessary, before
many years, to make some considerable provision for the 
healthful open-air recreation of its people; that it will be 
false economy to put off indefinitely the determination of a 
maturely organized, definite project for the purpose, either 
from a desire to restrict taxation, or because all parts of the 
city cannot be brought equally near to a suitable site for a10

park. It will be equally false economy, as we must think, for 
the city of Pawtucket to acquire a park, at this time, that 
provides but half what will soon be considered to have been 
desirable.

It was with these convictions that we made an examination 
of the Dunnell homestead property.
Like all the neighboring country, as far as we have observed, 
the soil of this property is naturally light and poor,
 and can be kept in good heart only by constant liberal treatment. 
The Dunnell property exhibits the results of such 
treatment skillfully and wisely applied during a long course 
of years. The feature in which this is most conspicuously 
shown is that of a grove and a few detached trees upon the 
lawn near the house. Had the city possessed this ground 
and been managing it for many years, through its own well-paid
servants, it is very unlikely that the result would have 
been as admirably adapted to the purpose of a park as it is.
 A few large trees have been accidentally injured, and there 
are shrubs and small trees on the lawn that have been over-trimmed 
and might better have been taken out, but they do 
not affect the value of the great body, with regard to which 
it may be said that there is not a park in the United States 
in which as good continuous management of a plantation as 
they display, more particularly in respect to timely thinning, 
has been secured. Rarely are trees seen, on an average, of 
as good promise, even when grown on soil naturally much 
better.

Adjoining this planted ground there is a body of open land 
that has been improved and treated in a manner varying 
little from that which would have been taken had it been intended 
to prepare it for use as a public playground.

Taken together, these two bodies of land would be most 
valuable constituents of a public park; but we do not think


11

that they supply all that is important should be brought 
together in a park for Pawtucket.

For one thing, it may be laid down as a rule, that a city 
situated upon navigable water should see to it, if possible, 
that its people are provided with good arrangements for making 
recreative use of some portion of this water; that pleasure 
routes of access to it and ample points of view over it 
are available, and that adequate precautions are taken to guard 
those making use of it from unnecessary, annoying disturbance 
by its commerce, or by the prevalence of offensive constructions 
or shabby conditions on its banks.

As a matter of pleasure in landscape, an acre of water to 
be overlooked is often as valuable a part of the park as an acre 
of land, while it commonly costs much less to obtain it, to 
prepare it and to keep it in good order. For great numbers 
of people there is no more inspiriting or more healthful form 
of recreation than that to be obtained in boats; provided the 
shores of the water to be used are pleasing, and the arrangements 
for boating such as park commissioners find it practicable 
to secure by the offer of special privileges as a condition 
of contract for the purpose.

With these views, after reporting to you and with your approval, 
we carried our examination from the Dunnell homestead 
to the river bank and found, a little south of the city, an 
expanse of water with beautiful margins in the foreground of 
a southern view and a charming distant prospect. Upon the 
more important line of view the shores are possessed by 
cemetery and hospital corporations, and the best security is 
thus had that, without expense to the city, their present most 
agreeable wooded character will be permanently preserved, 
and the intrusion of incongruous objects, such as factories, 
furnaces, railroads or taverns, be prevented.

Between those parts of the river bank where the largest 
enjoyment of the landscape is to be had, and the Dunnell12
homestead, there is a hillside with groves, chiefly of oak and
pine, and of such inclination that the ground shaded by the
grove is refreshingly swept by the prevailing summer breeze
moving up the river valley from the south and west.
It would, in our judgment, be wise for the city to obtain
possession, at an early day, of a sufficient body of land to
enable it to hold these advantages for a park ; and we have
aimed to show, by a drawing hereto attached, how land taken
for the purpose may be brought into connection with the
property to which our attention was originally asked, on the
high ground east of Prospect Street, and how the whole of
the territory thus advised to be taken may be so laid out as
to give the city a fairly comprehensive system of recreation
grounds.
Looking at the drawing, it will be seen that it proposes
that the park shall be limited on the east by a line that will
admit of its being bounded by a street which, in the future,
will be required for public convenience between South Bend
and Dunnell Streets.
It also proposes that the small property between the Dunnell
homestead and the corner of Prospect and Pond Streets
shall be bought with the park, the object being to gain a
good entrance for those approaching on foot by way of Prospect
Street. The plan provides for extensions and through
connections of streets whenever public convenience shall
make them desirable, essentially as they must probably be
made, if no ground should be taken for the park in the
vicinity. It proposes that on each side of the river, below
certain points where wharves are now in use or are likely to
be needed, as far south as the cemetery, a strip of land upon
the banks of the river shall be taken, of sufficient breadth
to secure a permanent sylvan border, trees being planted
where necessary to make the landscape completely rural in
character.

13
The suggested connection between the Dunnell homestead
and the river bank, is proposed to be made as far south
as practicable for two reasons : first, that it will be made at
less cost than it could at any point nearer the town ; second,
that it will bring visitors more directly to that part of the river
bank from which the outlook to a distance will be broader
and finer, and less liable to be disturbed than at any nearer
point.

Looking now at the plan as a whole, it will be seen that it
has three broad central features : first, a grove, to be used,
especially in hot weather, as a rambling ground. It is to be
formed by some thinning out of the present grove east of
the Dunnell mansion, leaving the majority, and all the best
of the trees, but securing such openings among them as are
necessary to keep the ground in turf, and allow sufficient
movement of air. Second, a large and a small playground,
to be formed upon the present mowing ground adjoining the
grove. The smaller ground is expected to be used for lawn
tennis, croquet, and other games in which ladies commonly
engage. The larger ground is to be used by schoolboys as
a ball field. Each of the playgrounds has a small house for
the deposit of garments and utensils of the games to be
played, and other necessary conveniences. Third, a picnic
ground, to occupy the best of the woods on the hillside looking
upon the river.
The three features thus specified will take up much the
larger part of all the park. Pleasure roads and walks with
shading plantations, will be laid out, as the drawing shows, in
circuitous courses about them.
The extremely crooked course of the road by which the
riverside must be reached from the playground district, is
necessary to avoid an undesirably steep grade. Walks for
ramblers are laid out, closely following the banks of the river;14
and at frequent points near them, there are to be seats so
placed as to give pleasant views toward the distant wooded
shores.
All the park, which has thus far been described, is designed
to have as much of a rustic character as is consistent
with the maintenance of neatness, and to be furnished with
nothing for mere ornament. The plantations indicated are
to be of native trees and shrubs, and a garden-like character
is to be particularly avoided, the object being to make a visit
to the park as far as practicable equivalent to a ramble amid
such scenery as could otherwise be had only by going much
farther out of town, and by following less convenient roads
and walks, or trespassing on private property.
The only highly dressed ground of the park is proposed to
be that near where the Dunnell mansion now stands, and
this is designed to be of a lawn-like, rather than a garden-like
character. The only artificial feature other than the roads,
walks, and seats for which the plan provides, is to be a pergola
or flat place to be covered with trellis work supporting
a canopy of vine foliage, with a little house adjoining it, from
which ices and other light summer refreshments may be
served at small tables under the shade of the canopy.
Flowering plants are intended to be grown, but only in
such a manner that they will have a natural aspect, along the
edges of the shrubbery near the walks immediately connecting
with the pergola.
We have carefully considered the question of retaining and
refitting the Dunnell mansion. In our judgement very little
of it is adapted to public use, or furtherance of the purpose of
the park, and with reference to this purpose it is not desirable
that any building should stand at the point it does. It is
very combustible, and in this and other respects, undesirable
for a library or place of records, or for the storage and exhibition
of objects of interest, industrial or otherwise. We

15
advise that it be removed, a single section of it, being that
which contains the dining-room, only being used in the park,
this to be revised and placed at the point designated for a
house in connection with the pergola; with verandas, it will
be a place of shelter if sudden showers come up, and it will
also form retiring rooms for ladies. The Dunnell stable is
also intended to be revised to serve as a house for the ball
ground. Another small building is to be removed, so as to
answer the same purpose, adjoining the girls' playground,
and yet another for use in connection with the picnic grove.
Respectfully,
F. L. & J. C. OLMSTED,
BROOKLINE, MASS. Landscape Architects.16

APPENDIX.
-------------
Area of entire park, including the intervening 
portion of the Seekonk River - 110.6 acres
" land - 79.5 "
" water - 31.1 "
" portion of the park east of Prospect St. 53.1 "
" the Grove - 8 "
" " South Playground - 11.3 "
" " North Playground - 2 "
" " Picnic Grove - 9.9 "
" " East Bank - 9.9 "
" " West Bank - 6.6 "
" " drives - 5.4 "
" " walks - 4.3 "
Length of drives - 1.6 miles
" walks - 4.1 "
Distance of Pergola from Main Street Bridge - 5 "
Elevation of highest land in park - 105 feet