256 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
It appears from the records, however, that at that same 
meeting, after the committee had left the board rooms, a 
resolution was, in executive session, offered by Commis- 
sioner John R. Hardin, and, at the next secret meeting of 
_ the Park Board adopted, that “the landscape architects be 
instructed to prepare, as soon as possible, a scheme of im- 
provement for parkway purposes, of Central avenue from 
the East Orange parkway to the Orange line, assuming the 
avenue will not be widened, and that a double-track rail- 
way, with overhead wires, will be placed on the center line 
thereof; roadway twenty feet wide on each side of the 
tracks; lawn treatment, etc., shrubs and trees, and treated 
as a street for both business and pleasure; the landscape 
architects also to furnish estimates of cost.” 
NOT WORTH THE COST. 
The report of Olmsted Brothers, of May 7 and May 
16, following that resolution, advised that “the improve- 
ment in the manner indicated will not be worth the cost”; 
that it involved “a purely engineering affair without the 
slightest element of beauty or art;” if it should be 
adopted, the avenue should be widened from “the East Or- 
ange Parkway to the Orange line to at least 110 feet, and 
new building lines established.” The estimated cost was 
then given at $119,384, with an annual maintenance ac- 
count of $4,389. 
Why this action of the Park Commission, in “assuming” 
as it did in the resolution quoted, that the question of a 
railroad on the avenue was then settled, and calling for a 
report combining a trolley and parkway project—which was 
at direct variance with the board’s announced policy for 
years theretofore, in contending that a parkway and trolley 
way could not be properly made on a 100 feet wide highway 
—was kept secret and from the joint committee and the 
public, is to me now, as I make this record, in view of all 
the circumstances, unaccountable; and I pass from the sub- 
ject without comment. 
The request of the joint committee referred to, as to send- 
