TWENTIETH ANNUAL REPORT 53 



for a strip of Park land sufficiently wide to allow the passage 

 of traffic tracks, such strip being twenty-three feet wide at the 

 widest part and tapering to a point at either end. 



Commissioner Whittle of the Department of Parks for the 

 Borough of the Bronx took a firm stand against the invasion 

 of the Park by the subway system, here an elevated structure. 



After much negotiation a line was agreed upon between 

 the Park Department and the Public Service Commission, largely 

 through the activities of Park Commissioner Ward, by which 

 the easterly line of the addition to Bronx Park was slightly 

 modified and a very small strip without important trees, turned 

 over for the use of the new subway, a strip of land of similar 

 area belonging to the Public Service Commission immediately 

 to the south, being returned to the Park. 



The subway construction company has been forced to build a 

 concrete wall and to keep the nearest line of rails eight feet back 

 from the top of such wall. The installation of storage yards 

 for dead cars, even though they be on land outside of the Park, 

 is nevertheless a public nuisance when located at the entrance 

 to one of the handsomest parks in the City of New York and 

 close to the entrance of the new Bronx Parkway. 



The Public Service Commission and their engineers, in 

 their planning and construction of the subway, have shown an 

 utter indifference to the most elemental artistic considerations, 

 and have exhibited an entire disregard of the Park interests. 

 If it had not been for the active protest of the Zoological Society 

 and the support received from the Park Department, many hand- 

 some trees would have been destroyed and much of the easterly 

 side of Bronx Park turned into an unsightly elevated yard for 

 the storage of dead cars. The Public Service Commission pur- 

 sued their old policy of secrecy until the last moment and until 

 the road was so far constructed that it was impossible to secure 

 any substantial change in the route. 



Bronx Park seems to be doomed to attacks of this char- 

 acter, but the Society has thus far succeeded in stopping them. 



A portion of the old Boston Post Road which passes through 

 the Park and still retains its original beauty, is threatened at 

 present with an overhead system of electric wiring, but as this 

 portion of the Park is within the jurisdiction of the Society, 

 your committee expect to be able to prevent its desecration by 

 ugly overhead wires, to say nothing of the injury to the splendid 

 forest trees that surround it. 



