OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 49 



even contemplated at this latter crossing. It is always exceedingly desirable to have 

 bridle-paths with long stretches from grade crossings, so cantering can be safely 

 indulged in. 



The Fenway Bridge and the facing of the culvert are modest pieces of boulder masonry 

 intended to be almost concealed by vines. It is usually suggestive of quaint homeliness 

 to use the characteristic materials and mechanicals of the locahty in which a structure 

 is built. This locality is covered with a network of stone walls put up by the farmers 

 with the boulders which encumbered their fields; hence hereabouts a lowly structure 

 of no great size or importance may well be built of boulders. The Fens proper end at 

 the Fens Bridge; hence its name. The waterway from Fens Bridge to the culvert at Brook- 

 line Avenue, although supplied like the Fens with salt water at every tide, is intended 

 to take on more of the character of a river than of Fens or salt marshes. This section 

 was originally called the Longwood Entrance. As the design developed, its name was 

 change to Riverway, better to express its designed character, and it had also to be con- 

 siderably widened. 



The Parker Hill Entrance at the time the land was taken, and before the final designer 

 was employed, was intended as the start of a broad parkway to the top of Parker Hill 

 and down the opposite side and thence to Jamaica Pond; but it would have been very 

 steep, and the comparatively level Riverway affords a far more convenient and 

 pleasurable drive. A plan for a branch parkway to the top of Parker Hill was actually 

 studied. It was desirable to afford a pleasure drive approach to this fine viewpoint, but 

 the expense for land and construction was considered prohibitive. 



THE RIVERWAY 



The idea of having the Riverway and the Leverett Pond section of Olmsted Park, 

 instead of the proposed formal boulevard by way of Parker Hill, originated from the 

 creative imagination of the designer of the Fens, Frederick Law Olmsted. The idea was 

 based on the general principle of looking for every available opportunity for preserving, 

 in connection with park work, such beautiful elements of existing scenery as can be 

 used directly or by adaptation. Here was a salt creek fringed with salt marshes. The 

 boundary between the City of Boston and the Town of Brookline followed the thread 

 of the stream. A good part of the Boston side had a beautiful tree-clad bank with suburban 

 residences above it. Farther south it was marshy. On the Brookline side, below Aspin- 

 wall Avenue, the beautiful valley was disfigured by the railroad with the usual steep 

 gravel slope covered with cinders and weeds, and fenced. At Longwood Station there 

 was, in addition, a group of cheap dwellings. For some distance north of Washington 

 Street the cheapest kind of dwellings and tenements pressed upon and practically obliter- 

 ated the stream. About forty houses were condemned in this locality. Most of these 

 houses were unpainted and more or less dilapidated. The citizens who occupied them 

 were commonly referred to at town meetings and elsewhere as "from the marsh." Unless 

 some extensive and expensive improvement of the whole valley were to be soon made, 

 it was seemingly inevitable that this squalid and unsanitary occupation of it would cover 

 all parts of this valley and discourage good occupation of the neighborhood. 



The idea of preserving the valley and making it a feature of the parkway system was 

 accepted. The greatest care had to be taken to adjust the boundary on the Boston side, ^ 



