REPORT 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 



To the Board of Commissioners of Prospect Park, Brooklyn : 



Gentlemen : We have been instructed to lay before you at this 

 time such plans, accompanied by information and advice, as would aid 

 you in a final review of the boundaries of the park proposed to be 

 formed under your government. The study herewith submitted has 

 been prepared for this purpose, and though not designed to be full or 

 accurate in all details, is intended to be complete in those respects 

 which are essential to an understanding of the advantages, to be gained 

 by such changes of the boundaries as we would recommend to be 

 secured, before a plan of construction is definitively settled upon. 



We proceed to show what these changes are, and why they are 

 considered desirable. 



In selecting a site for a park, it is evidently important that such 

 natural advantages should be secured as are found in well grown 

 woods, an agreeable variety of surface and fair prospects both of dis- 

 tant and local scope. It is true, that a site may be deficient in any 

 of these characteristics, and yet, with time enough and money enough, 

 be convertible, by well directed labor, into a park of varied and 

 attractive scenery. If, however, such conditions as are most desir- 

 able to be added, should have been already provided by nature in 

 the immediate vicinity of a site, it would be felt, on the one hand, to 

 be an extravagance to repeat them by artificial means upon it ; while, 

 on the other, the disadvantage of its being without them would be 

 greater, because more obvious. Moreover, there are two possible 

 misfortunes of a site, which in no period of time, and by no expend- 

 iture of labor, can ever be remedied. These are, inadequate dimen- 

 sions and an inconvenient shape. 



Our first duty has been to examine the site to which you have 



