136 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
and correctly these early advocates of the Triangle Park 
saw the possibilities which have, by latter events, become 
actualities. 
While this discussion was going on, nothing toward prac- 
tical results then came of it. These advanced thinkers were, 
like so many of their class, a little ahead of their time in 
the agitation, and it was, therefore, left for the first Park 
Commission of 1894 to take up the question where their pre- 
decessors in advocating the project had left it. With the 
first commission there was no difference in conviction, 
either in the minds of the commissioners or of the land- 
scape experts as to the desirability of establishing a park 
there; indeed, the reasons, as they then appeared, in favor, 
were so many and so ample as to have left no question of 
doubt, that I had ever heard expressed, upon that question. 
OPPOSITION TO PARK LOCATION. 
‘When the second commission of 1895 was appointed, an 
entirely different situation was presented. For some reason 
which I have never been able to fully account for, the two 
new members of the board, Messrs. F. M. Shepard and 
Franklin Murphy, were radically and persistently opposed 
to the project. When, during the summer of 1895, the sub- 
ject was referred to as one that in all probability would 
require the attention of the commission at a later time, the 
triangle was slightingly referred to in the commission as “a 
back door park.” When later the petitions began to come 
in, urging favorable action, the opposition gradually in- 
creased, instead of the reverse. 
In September a long petition was earnestly presented by 
a citizens’ committee from East Orange and Orange. This 
document recited the reasons for the park—the natural ad- 
vantages, the proximity to dense populations, the attitude 
of public opinion in favor of it, the reasonable cost, ete. The 
communication bore the signatures of Frank H. Scott, 
chairman; William Pierson, L. D. Gallison, W. 8. Macy, I. 
Bayard Dodd, E. V, Z, Lane and R. W. Hawkesworth. It 
