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able to exercise the forecast needful to the proper development of 

 the advantages of our city, without waiting for a ruinous disadvan- 

 tage in competition to be established. In one thing we are about 

 to strike out first and foremost, and long before the much talked of 

 railroad from the Battery to the upper part of New York and to 

 Westchester is made, I trust we shall have had the advantage of our 

 bridge. 



But to go back to the Park Commission in 1864. At no time in 

 the history of the two cities has the tendency appeared to be so 

 strongly established toward a state of things in which the capitalists 

 of the country living at its metropolis should have their residences 

 in the city of New York, while their clerks and workmen only had 

 houses in Brooklyn, with the inevitable consequence that the profit 

 of the labor represented by our population should be mainly enjoyed 

 outside our limits, and that our taxable property should be of hope- 

 lessly inferior character. 



The question which was pressed upon us was, therefore, simply 

 this : Whether any plan of improvement could be devised and 

 undertaken which would be adequate to attract and hold among us a 

 large share of that class of citizens which it was necessary should be 

 attracted, if we were to avoid throwing upon our people of moderate 

 means, and upon the poor, an excessive and crushing burden of taxa- 

 tion. If not, it was certainly very questionable whether we could 

 afford to enter upon any plan the carrying out of which would in- 

 volve the city in a considerable expenditure. In short, if we could not 

 settle this point satisfactorily, it was doubtful, to say the least, whether 

 the city could afford a park at all. 



Considerations of this character weighed upon us much more in 

 1864 than in 1860, when the park at Ridgewood of 1,300 acres 

 was still on our hands. They forced us to proceed deliberately and 

 cautiously. 



First of all, we took the precaution of giving a fresh and more 

 complete examination to the question of boundaries, approaches and 

 entrances — a question properly antecedent to the question of a plan 

 of interior improvement — and for this purpose we called Mr. Vaux, 

 one of the designers of Central Park, to our assistance. We knew 

 that the want of consideration of this question at the outset had 

 already been a source of difficulty, and of great expense to the 

 Commissioners of the Central Park, and that they were even then 

 debating propositions for acquiring land to improve their entrances, 

 which had enormously increased in value since their work com- 

 menced. Our review of the question led us to fix upon one point 



