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the circumstances which have led to the acquisition by the city of 

 the two bodies of land in question. 



In the year 1858, a project was bruited about for establishing a 

 series of public pleasure grounds in and about the city, each of which 

 was intended to be located and laid out with reference to the accom- 

 modation, not of the population at large, but for the special benefit 

 of that portion of the population which should live nearer to it than 

 to either of the others. 



To advance this project, a Commission was formed by an act of 

 the Legislature of 1859, which the following year reported a plan 

 whereby the city would have had to maintain eight considerable 

 public grounds. Three of these were to be of large size, and were 

 intended for the benefit respectively of the Eastern, Central, and 

 Southern districts of the city, while five others, more nearly of the 

 class of Fort Greene, were designed still more especially for local 

 resort. Of the larger grounds, one was to be connected with each of 

 the great city reservoirs, the third was to be at Bay Ridge. 



Although the land recommended to be taken at one of these 

 points was soon afterwards acquired by the city, no measures look- 

 ing to construction were adopted, and the eight-park scheme, as it 

 stood at the time this ground was selected, soon came to be con- 

 sidered an unwieldy and impracticable one, and in effect was aban- 

 doned. 



Nothing more was done toward supplying the city with pleasure 

 grounds until after a period of eight years from the origin of the 

 first project. 



In the meantime, an experiment of the sort of local pleasure 

 grounds which, on account of the expense involved, were alone prac- 

 ticable under this eight-park scheme had been tried at Fort Greene 

 and found to result in an injury rather than a benefit to property in 

 the neighborhood, while New York, had fairly established the su- 

 perior advantages of a concentration of capital in the production of 

 a comprehensive', well equipped and well kept park, adapted to draw 

 together all classes of the community from every part of a great 

 city. It had also begun to be realized, that so long as Brooklyn 

 offered nothing of the character of the New York park, it must 

 expect to fall rapidly into the background as a competitor in pro- 

 viding attractive sites for the residence of a large tax-paying class 

 of citizens. 



In the light of this experience, it had become generally evident in 

 1865, when our relations with your Commission commenced, that 

 effective discussion centered upon a very different idea from that 



