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merit which they have from time to time suggested, by their 

 annual reports and otherwise, as opportunity presented ; and it 

 is thus that they hope to establish for Brooklyn that reputation 

 which she justly merits, of a highly favored quarter of the 

 great metropolis of this Western world, possessing superior 

 natural advantages in many respects over her more wealthy 

 neighbor, but particularly as a healthful and desirable place of 

 residence for her men of business. 



The success of our park enterprise, now so generally ad- 

 mitted, is believed to have contributed largely to the produc- 

 tion of the increased values to which the Commissioners have 

 referred. On reference to the assessment rolls of the city's 

 property, they find that since the commencement of active 

 operations on the park, there has been added to her tax list the 

 large amount of $77,232,410, the Board of Assessors having 

 felt themselves justified by its very obvious increase in adding 

 25 per cent, to the list of her taxable property for the year 1869. 

 The amount of such property is now $196,024,110, while in 

 the rural districts it is $11,808,933, making the total amount 

 now standing on the assessor's books, $208,433,043, nearly two- 

 fifths thereof having been added since the period above referred 

 to. It should be observed, also, in order to a proper apprecia- 

 tion of these facts, that a large portion of this increase, to wit : 

 the sum of $32,820,059, has arisen in the wards immediately 

 surrounding the park, including the town of Flatbush, thereby 

 increasing the city's annual income nearly a million of dollars. 



The rapid increase of our population, as well as the number 

 of houses built for their accommodation, fully sustains the 

 action of the assessors. During the time referred to, our city 

 has trebled its former annual rate of house building, and she 

 has actually erected nearly one-half more houses within the last 

 three years than were built in the city of New York. That 

 our territorial expansion corresponds therewith appears from 

 the many miles of new streets opened, graded and paved within 

 the past year, while more than eight additional miles of re- 

 pavement, having an improved surface which supersedes the 

 old fashioned cobble stone pavement, has opened up several 

 direct and easy approaches to the park. The population of 

 our city, also, according to the statistics of the past forty years, 

 has been found to double in rather less than twelve years, the 



