112 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
COMMISSION PAID CITY $20,000. 
The city authorities, not wishing to delay work on the 
parks, had in the meantime, during the years 1896 and 
1897, with reasonable promptness, taken proceedings to close 
the necessary streets leading to each of the parks—Branch 
Brook, East Side, and West Side—as located within the 
city limits. But the questions referred to were not fully 
disposed of until the offer of the commission, agreed upon 
at the meeting November 16, 1898, was accepted. Under 
that proposition and the final settlement, the commission 
paid the city of Newark, through the Board of Street and 
Water Commissioners, $20,000, together with the privilege 
of constructing the city sewer through the park; and, in 
consideration of this, the latter board ceded to the commis- 
sion the two blocks of land—all the city then owned—in 
the Sussex avenue division of the park, between Duryee 
street, Orange street and the Morris Canal. 
TURNING THE FIRST SOD. 
The real work in grading, and for the surface embellish- 
ment of Branch Brook Park, was begun the morning of 
June 15, 1896. No special ceremony graced the occasion. 
Three of the commissioners, Messrs. Peck, Meeker and 
myself, with the secretary and Engineer Bogart, were pres- 
ent. Promptly, at 8:30 o’clock, the president, with 
a new spade, turned the first sod. The contractors 
had a large force of men and teams ready, and, from that 
time, the work on this great pleasure ground went rapidly 
forward. Now that more than nine years have passed and 
more than $2,500,000 has been expended there, the work is 
hardly yet completed, and at the present rate of progress 
it may be another year before the bridge approaches and 
other improvements are finished. 
When completed, this park of 278 acres will be one of the 
most attractive and interesting pleasure grounds of the size 
in the country. The topography is sufficiently varied to make 
practicable the different styles of landscape treatment em- 
