PARK SITES CHOSE 131 
referred to “the State fair grounds and Laxe Weequahic, 
with its eighty-five acres of watery expanse,” and said: “As 
this park will be nearer Elizabeth than Newark, Union 
County citizens are rejoicing at the philanthropy of the 
Essex commissioners.” 
My own convictions were quite fully stated in a letter to 
Commissioner Murphy, dated Saturday evening, May 23, 
1896, which was as follows: 
“Dear Mr. Murphy: Mr. Peck and I have spent the 
afternoon looking over “West Newark,” Weequahic and the 
southern parkway question. The situation troubles me. A 
double track on Elizabeth avenue at once disposes of any 
prospect of making a park in that vicinity a part of a cred- 
itable connective park system. It is the only avenue avail- 
able or worth considering for parkway purposes. The width 
is only fifty or sixty feet between the curb lines. Another 
track there will make it merely a tramway thoroughfare, 
like Frelinghuysen avenue—both dangerous and unsightly 
—and preclude any thought of ever making it a parkway 
approach. 
“Tf the Board of Works will grant the franchise regard- 
less of facts or conditions, we have then to meet the situa- 
tion of a site for an important park of the county system, 
isolated from suitable driveway approach from the great 
center of population of the county, bounded on both longi- 
tudinal sides by railroads; a swamp tract with most unat- 
tractive features at one end, and a cemetery and Union 
County line at the other—with a large area of swamp in the 
center, the expense of dredging which opens up a perfect 
kaleidoscope of possibilities as to cost which no man can now 
determine. 
COMPLICATIONS IN THE SITUATION. 
“T cannot be frank with you as my colleague and asso- 
ciate in this enterprise without expressing to you these im- 
pressions as I looked over these conditions to-day. I was 
forcibly reminded whether the adverse report of four of the 
