THE FIRST $1,000,000 101 
rapidly as possible with the acquirement of park lands and 
other work of the board. The land agents were requested 
to expedite purchases. The counsel was authorized to begin 
condemnation proceedings, directly owners were found who 
would not sell at a fair price, or in cases where such action 
was found necessary to correct or complete title. The com- 
mission held frequent meetings, often twice a week, to pass 
upon those questions and to determine the boundary lines 
of each of the parks as soon as a location for a park was 
decided upon. In almost every instance these locations, 
after they were determined, brought up anew the question 
as to extensions. 
As has already been stated, the first outlines of the 
Branch Brook Park, agreed upon July 30, 1895, extended 
only so far as Park avenue on the north and to Orange 
street on the south. Almost immediately afterward exten- 
sions in both directions were under consideration. No 
sooner had the official map for the East Side, or “Down 
Neck,” Park been prepared, than petitions and delegations 
from that section asked that the park area there be enlarged. 
This result followed quite generally, and as the majority of 
the board had determined upon the plan of dealing with 
each of the park sites separately, rather than as a part of 
the system as a whole, the importance of each location was 
unduly magnified accordingly. In order to give the reader 
a correct view of the progress of this work, perhaps an ac- 
count of the selection of each of the parks in something like 
the order of their location may here be of interest. 
While a number of the park sites as afterward chosen 
were under consideration simultaneously, a final decision 
was more readily evolved with some than with others, and 
these decisions, in a few cases, were deferred for many 
months. 
The same day (July 30, 1895) that the commission 
accepted formal control of the reservoir property, the land- 
scape architects and engineers were requested to prepare a 
map indicating their best judgment as to the lines for a 
park with the sixty acres transferred by the city of Newark 
