August S, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



3ii 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles:— The Harlem River Speedway .. 311 



The Devastation of our National Forest Reservations 312 



North American Thorns Thomas Meehan. 312 



The Progress of Bulb Culture in North Carolina.. Professor IV. F. Massey. 312 



Botanical Notes from Texas.— XXII E. N. Plank. 313 



New or Little-known Plants: — Populus Monticola. (With figure.) 313 



Plant Notes 314 



Cultural Department: — Collecting Kahnias Jackson Dawson. 314 



Notes on Trees and Shrubs J. G. Jack. 315 



Crops in an Orchard T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 316 



Chrysanthemums T. D. Hatfield. 316 



Hardy Plants which Flower in late July F. H. Horsford. 316 



Notes from Cornell University G. Harold Powell. 317 



The Kitchen Garden 5". 317 



Strawberries L. R. Taft. 317 



The Forest : — Mixed Oak and Beech Forests of the Spessart : Management by 



the Bavarian Government. — III Sir Dietrich Brandis. 317 



Correspondence :— Woad Wax R. S. 318 



Seedlings from the Shaffer Raspberry Professor Samuel B. Green. 319 



Recent Publications 319 



Notes 3*9 



Illustration : — Populus Monticola in Lower California, Fig. 51 315 



The Harlem River Speedway. 



A LETTER addressed to the Mayor of New York, and 

 puhlished in the daily papers last week, invites atten- 

 tion to a state of things which one can hardly conceive of 

 as existing in any civilized community, much less in the 

 largest and wealthiest city in the New World. This letter 

 was prepared by members of the Municipal Art Society 

 — men who speak for architecture, painting and sculp- 

 ture, and who represent the education and refinement of 

 the city — and it sets forth that the Commissioners of Public 

 Parks of this city, in the face of repeated protests, have 

 given out contracts for the construction of a parkway ex- 

 tending for more than two miles along a picturesque river- 

 front, without taking counsel of their own professional 

 adviser or of any other man who has had any training or 

 experience in designing works of this class. This means 

 that the Park Board is wantonly throwing away an oppor- 

 tunity to make one of the most beautiful drives and prom- 

 enades in the world, and has ordered engineers to build a 

 road-bed simply ; that is, they are to cut and fill and level 

 off the ground so as to make, a surface to drive over, with 

 no more thought of providing for a pleasure-ground that 

 shall be attractive or useful, except for a single purpose, 

 than if they were constructing a foundation for a tramway 

 or trolley line. 



Ever since they undertook to furnish a track for light- 

 harness driving the entire course of the Park Board has 

 been marked by singular perversity and ignorance. They 

 began by securing an act of the Legislature enabling them 

 to seize a part of Central Park and turn it into a dirt road. 

 But this proposed outrage caused such an uprising of the 

 people here that the Legislature, the Governor and the Park 

 Commissioners were all driven within a week to face about 

 and abandon their plot. When the banks of the Harlem 

 had been selected as a site for the road Mr. Vaux, the 

 andscapa-architect for the Board, provided a plan which 

 ncluded designs fo: preserving and enhancing the natural 



beauties of the water-front and for making them available. 

 This plan was, however, ignored, and the Board ordered 

 the construction of a road which was inferior even for the 

 purpose which they had first in mind, and which did not 

 leave even standing-room on the shore for a pedestrian, but 

 shut off the river-front from every one who could not visit 

 it in a road-wagon. This attempted violation of the peo- 

 ple's rights and defiance of common decency called forth a 

 protest from every organ of public opinion in thecity : and a 

 formal remonstrance from all societies which have to do in 

 any way with art, was made against the abandonment of the 

 uniform practice of the city in treating its parks as works of 

 art. But men essentially boorish can never understand 

 what every refined mind knows by intuition, and therefore 

 this protest passed for nothing, and the construction of the 

 speedway went on. Finally, an exasperated people ap- 

 pealed once more to the Legislature, and a special act was 

 passed which enjoined the Board from constructing a road 

 without a walk on the river-side. Even then contracts 

 were given out in contempt of the law, and Mr. Paul Dana 

 resigned his post as Commissioner because the Board was 

 plainly and willfully violating the law. They did not desist 

 from their law-defying course, however, until three citizens 

 had the courage and public spirit to appear personally in 

 the courts and make complaints that their private rights 

 had been invaded. 



Without giving anv further details of this disgraceful his- 

 tory, it is enough to say that the Park Commissioners are 

 still doing all they can to defeat the often expressed desire 

 of the people. They are not only building the road with- 

 out any regard to its artistic value, but they are narrowing 

 down the walk which the law compels them to lay along 

 the river-side, so that no adequate provision is made for 

 shade or for accommodating the throngs who will one 

 day gather here to witness regattas on the river and 

 other spectacles. To the men who ask them why they do 

 not consult their landscape-architect the Park Commis- 

 sioners reply that they will invite his advice at the proper 

 time, evidently considering it the function of this artist to 

 make flower-beds and plant bushes in spots where he can 

 find room for them after the road-makers have finished 

 their digging. 



Altogether, this is an unpleasant showing for a commu- 

 nity which considers itself enlightened. No sane man 

 would think of asking one of these Commissioners for 

 advice as to laying out a path across a door-yard ; and 

 yet they assume to know enough to design a work like 

 this speedway, which is worthy of all the study that a 

 trained artist can give to it, and which might be 

 made under skilled treatment one of the noblest and 

 most useful public works of this city. This inability 

 to appreciate the value of artistic training is the essence of 

 vulgarity. It is worse than simple ignorance ; it is a com- 

 placent belief that there is nothing better than ignorance. 

 And meanwhile the people must stand by and see one of 

 their most beautiful possessions laid waste because some 

 prosperous brewer or seller of notions imagines that a 

 commission from a New York Mayor qualifies him to de- 

 sign a park or a public building or any other work of art. 

 Of course, such a man does not know how to meet a sin- 

 gle one of the many problems which would confront a 

 skilled park-maker as soon as he began any serious study 

 of the difficulties and opportunities offered by the Harlem 

 River front. He does not even dream that there are such 

 problems, and scouting the protest of men like St. Gaudens, 

 White and Chase, he blunders on. If a public enemy should 

 set fire to the city some effort would probably be made to 

 restrain him. But it would take a good many fires to work 

 injury as serious and lasting as that which is now inflicted 

 on the city by the very men who have been selected to 

 protect its property. Every day while the construction of 

 this speedway goes on the city suffers. Its money is mis- 

 spent ; its opportunities are squandered ; its natural beauty 

 is obliterated, and with it vanishes an attractiveness and 

 charm which money cannot restore. 



