282 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
grounds, it was found that there was little, in the various 
kinds of improvements there, that appeared to be applica- 
ble to the park problem in Essex. 
Reference has already been made in the preceding chap- 
ters to the petitions of citizens, and hearings given by the 
Park Board to numerous delegations from various parts of 
the county. Perhaps one of the most interesting and com- 
mendable communications was the circular letter of the 
South Orange citizens’ committee of December 6, 1895. 
The committee proposed “a plan of self-assessment” of 
from forty cents to one dollar per front foot on property 
fronting on the streets more especially affected by the local 
park, which “‘it was desired should be established, extending 
from the Orange Triangle Park, by and including the 
Montrose tennis grounds, to South Orange avenue.” This 
letter, or petition, I had before me, or in mind, when at 
the Park Board meeting March 2, 1896, I offered the reso- 
lution authorizing the preparation by the landscape archi- 
tects and engineers of an official “map of a connecting 
parkway along, or adjacent to, Mosswood avenue, from 
Warwick avenue via Tremont avenue to the triangle tract,” 
as mentioned in Chapter VIII. 
With Central avenue as a parkway, as planned at that 
time, this extension by the tennis grounds to South Orange, 
would, in time, have made a park and parkway route direct 
from Branch Brook Park, Sussex avenue, Ninth avenue, 
Grove street or Sixteenth street, Central avenue and the 
Orange Park, one of the most attractive park system fea- 
tures to be found in this country. 
On May 6, 1898, the landscape architects and engineers, 
Messrs. Barrett and Bogart, made a report to the commis- 
sion on the subject of a parkway on the lines of Mosswood 
avenue, the plan to include a proposed gift of land just 
previously offered by Sidney M. Colgate. No action, how- 
ever, was taken. 
August 20, 1898, a delegation of citizens from Belleville 
petitioned for a parkway from the Second River northerly 
to the county line. The district was deemed too sparsely 
