PARK AND PLAYGROUND SYSTEM 



advances along all lines enabled the city authorities to keep 

 house properly with an increase of but one-half mill in the tax 

 rate for 1906. That is, the increased cost has been barely 

 one-fourth that proposed under the most favorable conditions 

 at the time the movement was projected. For 1907, the tax 

 rate has been fixed at a rate one-half mill less than the 1902 

 promise. 



In 1906 the Harrisburg Park Commission purchased of Mr. 

 E. B. Mitchell certain lands to extend its Reservoir Park in 

 Harrisburg. The whole tract, including, I think, some twelve 

 or thirteen acres, was offered to the city at $1,000 an acre. 

 Only a portion of the offer was accepted, and the owner, Mr. 

 Mitchell, was very much provoked at the declination to buy 

 all of his land at $1,000 an acre. A little more than two years 

 later the park in the mean time having been extended and 

 opened I had a desire to live close to one of its entrances, and 

 in that portion of the Mitchell tract which was not accepted 

 from him when offered at $1,000 an acre. I went to Mr. 

 Mitchell, and asked his price on an acre or a half-acre. He 

 declined to talk with me at all on the acre basis, and finally 

 and rather grudgingly offered to sell me a half-acre at $6,250. 

 I declined to buy, but he eventually sold not only that tract, 

 but all the rest of it, at a rate equal to or exceeding the price 

 asked me. 



This is one instance. Another is close by. The same park 

 has so changed valuations in its vicinity that the price estab- 

 lished some six or seven years ago of $400 an acre for land a 

 little farther away from the park has changed to between $2,500 

 and $4,000 an acre for the same and neighboring land. 



While I do not have on the instant other items, I can say to 

 you that a rather extended and close observation of these 

 matters, proceeding over some ten years, has convinced me 

 that in no case have adequate park extensions failed to largely 

 increase real estate values in the vicinity. 



(J. Horace McFarland, Park Commissioner.) 



Brookline, Mass. 



Recurring now to an illustration of municipal development 



on broad lines as a remunerative investment for the town, the 



Beacon Parkway will be cited. Beacon Street from opposite 



* the State House in Boston extends in a westerly direction about 



ten miles to Newton Lower Falls. About two and one-half 



[351 



