American society of landscape architects 93 



to depths of from twenty-five to forty feet, the filling in of the marsh-land and the con- 

 struction of an immense system of docks along the shores and on the land to be filled in 

 the bay. The scheme advised in the majority report diflfers especially from that of the 

 minority in the arrangement of the areas in the middle of the bay. The majority report 

 plan follows, as far as possible, the channels existing in the bay, thus making crooked 

 water courses and islands of irregular shape. The minority report would make two long 

 islands with a straight channel between them in the middle of the bay, and a third occupy- 

 ing the region between Bergen Beach, Barren Island and Plum Beach. This has certainly 

 the merit of a superb simplicity. 



The line of docks proposed along the shores of the bay is about twenty-five miles 

 long. As most of the piers would be very large, and as the system of handling freight 

 would be the most modern and expeditious and, in consequence, a vast improvement over 

 that now in use along the New York water-front, it would seem reasonable to consider 

 this twenty-five miles of dock- and wharf-front as at least equal to the thirty-five miles 

 or so of more or less out-of-date wharfage that now serves the city. The arrangement 

 of a strip six hundred and forty feet wide for warehouses, railway tracks and factories 

 along part of the water-front proposed is very interesting and can be studied in the majority 

 report. Thus, if the shores of Jamaica Bay and the creeks were lined with docks, as pro- 

 posed, they might be expected to keep pace with the commercial needs of New York for 

 thirty or forty years, assuming that the exports and imports kept up their present rate of 

 increase. After that time more wharfage would have to be found somewhere, and an obvious 

 extension would be to the land in the middle of the bay. 



But this assumes that there would be no extension elsewhere. It ignores the fact that 

 even though Jamaica Bay is eight or ten miles nearer Europe, Newark Bay and its tribu- 

 tary rivers and kills are as yet practically undeveloped, and that the Hackensack Meadows 

 could be dredged and filled in the same way and for the same purpose as Jamaica Bay, 

 and that all these places are on the mainland and in direct communication with all the 

 lines of railroad excepting those leaving the Grand Central Station, while Jamaica Bay is 

 reached only by the Pennsylvania and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroads 

 and all freight would have to be carried to the mainland by water. It also ignores that 

 this same Commission has advised the development of many miles of dockage on Staten 

 Island, Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx. The fact that Newark Bay and the adjoining 

 territory is no less likely to receive development than Jamaica Bay is referred to several 

 times in the course of the report, and especially in the minority report which says, "It 

 would seem that the providing for the larger part of this increase in shipping will fall to 

 the lot of the city of New York, unless New Jersey, through the development 0/ her meadow- 

 lands upon the mainland, should forestall her and utilize these advantages for her own citizens." 

 (The words from "unless" on are printed in capitals in the report). 



There being so much other water-front along which wharf and harbor facilities may 

 be expected to develop, it seems not unreasonable to suppose that the interior of Jamaica 

 Bay may not be required for seventy-five or one hundred years; perhaps not at all, for 

 unforeseen commercial conditions may arise and the increase of New York's trade may not 

 go on forever. In the meantime, I would suggest the use of the interior flats and channels 

 of the bay for a public park. Not a conventional park with lawns and exotic trees and shrubs 

 and asphalt walks, but a water-park with many and intricate channels intersecting the 

 great level areas of reclaimed marsh, on which all the sports of smooth water, rowing. 



