190° FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
and will give a desirable and useful approach to the 
mountain.” 
This report was in entire accord with the former reports 
of all the park-making specialists of both the first and 
second commissions. Frederick Law Olmsted who, prior 
to his retirement in 1897, and death in 1903, was accred- 
ited one of the greatest public park specialists known, had, 
in his firm’s report of January, 1895, referred to Central 
and Park avenues as follows: 
“Tssex County is already provided with streets generally 
called avenues, that are essentially parkways of a formal 
character leading to the foot of Orange Mountain. To 
make them all that is desirable for your purpose it is only 
necessary that suitable building lines should be established 
on their borders; that roads should extend from them on 
easy grades up the mountain, and that certain improve- 
ments of detail should be made in them”—a concise and 
axiomatic statement, the correctness of which, as applied 
to the avenue-parkway situation in Essex County, no one 
has ever attempted to refute or even question? 
At the Park Board meetings January 7 and 11, 1897, 
the reply to Chairman Stanley’s letter was under consider- 
ation. Mr. Shepard presented and moved the adoption 
of a draft of letter in reply, which it was understood had 
been formulated or suggested by Counsel Munn. It con- 
tained these statements: 
“As the larger parks must be outside of thickly settled 
districts, the commission favors every reasonable plan for 
reaching these, in parkways or otherwise, quickly and at 
the lowest cost, and without interference with the busi- 
ness or occupation of citizens. 
“They recognize the fact that electricity is the coming 
power for the transportation of people in cities and su- 
burban places. They would like to see methods in opera- 
tion by which people could leave Newark and reach the 
Orange Mountain parks in fifteen minutes, and at a cost 
of three or not exceeding five cents. These same methods 
would, of course, enable people living in the country to 
