46 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY 



where but near-by, cost the city, so far as the park is concerned, over a million dollars 

 more than it would if the Park Commission had been left free to act on its own judgment. 

 It is true the city in that case would have had to construct the Stony Brook flood-channel, 

 now nearing completion, sooner than it did. Even if this park had to be located, as it 

 was, where the deepest and widest channels intersected the salt marshes, and even if it 

 had to be improved in such a way that the floods of Stony Brook could be taken care 

 of in and through it, the park might have been twice as large, yet less expensive, if the 

 shape had been a rectangle, with its length, say, three times its width. The present 

 periphery of the park and its entrances is nearly three miles. If the park had been a rec- 

 tangle half a mile wide and one mile long, its boundary drives would have been only a 

 trifle longer than they now are, yet the park, including border streets, would have had 

 an area of 320 acres, instead of only 115 acres as at present. The enormous advantages 

 of this increase of 205 acres in size may be gathered from the statement that it would 

 have afi"orded space for a play-field of nearly that area, a most important feature in which 

 the present park is necessarily entirely lacking. Or, as an alternative, this park, if limited 

 to its present area (115 acres), might have been a rectangle as long as the present main 

 body of the park (3,500 feet), and 430 feet wider than at present; yet, in that case, the 

 boundary street would have had a total length of one and three-quarters miles instead 

 of two and seven-eighths miles. As by far the greater part of the expense of construction 

 of this park has been its borders, it is obvious that a park havmg the same area could have 

 been provided for about two-thirds of the actual cost of construction. The saving, amount- 

 ing to some $700,000, might have been put into one or more great play-fields. 



The acquirement of the land for the Fens was begun in 1877, and in deference to 

 local political opinion a competition for plans was held. An outsider, Mr. Frederick 

 Law Olmsted, was invited to act as judge of the competition, after having refused to 

 submit apian in competition; but the proposed duty did not appeal to him and he declined. 

 After the competition had taken place, and after the prize had been awarded, the same 

 New York landscape architect was employed to review the problem and give some general 

 advice. One of the first things he did was to have a thorough consultation with the City 

 Engineer. He thus discovered, what the competitors who submitted plans had apparently 

 not thought to ascertain, that there was a very serious problem as to what should be done 

 with the floods of the Stony Brook. This brook ran through the low part of Roxbury at such 

 a low level that the water in it was set back by the tides. As usually happens, the brook 

 had been cribbed and confined by private land-owners and careless street-builders, and 

 the buildings on adjoining lands had been set so low that cellars were frequently flooded, 

 especially in the spring, and at intervals of a few years these floods occurring coincidently 

 with extra-high tides when the sea-water is driven into the harbor by easterly gales, flooded 

 not only cellars but streets, deep enough for boating. The radical remedy since adopted 

 — namely, the construction of a more direct underground channel as big as a double track 

 subway tunnel — was at that time deemed utterly out of the question owing to the cost, 

 which was estimated at several million dollars. The City Engineer's idea was that the 

 new park should be treated frankly as a storage basin, the water in it being ordinarily 

 kept salt and the shores steeply sloped and pitched with large stones in the manner usual 

 for reservoirs. By tide-gates the water-surface could be kept so low that the water of 

 Stony Brook could be received and stored during high tide at a low-enough level to prevent 

 much of the damage to the low portion of Roxbury. This simple but ugly improvement 



