43 



Ridge wood, with the view of taking it up again the following years, but 

 the war came, and it proved to be an indefinite postponement of that 

 part of the original scheme. 



I have thus shown how the project of a park at Prospect Hill was 

 gradually developed as an independent local undertaking. 



An act providing for the appointment of a Board of Estimate and 

 Assessment, and also for appointing a Commission to lay out and man- 

 age the proposed park at Prospect Hill was passed in 1860. The Com- 

 mission were unable to immediately take any active steps looking to 

 the construction of the park, but deeming it important for the interests 

 of the city that when they should make the first of the reports which 

 they were required to present to the Common Council at the end of 

 each year, they should be able to present the scheme in a form which 

 would make it appear to the public as mature as possible, they' decided 

 that a survey and report suitable for publication should be at once 

 undertaken. They appropriated fifteen hundred dollars for all the ex- 

 penses of this survey and the report of the engineer, and obtained what 

 was wanted for the immediate purpose in view, but it is hardly neces- 

 sary to say that what was done at this time was of a purely preliminary 

 character, and not at all what would have been required with reference 

 to purposes of construction ; certainly not with reference to the con- 

 struction of the park which we now, five years afterward, have in hand, 

 the boundaries of which are so different that nearly one half of it is 

 quite outside of the ground covered by the engineer's report which we 

 then obtained. 



The fact should here be mentioned, that the boundaries of the park 

 established at Prospect Hill, by the Acts of the Legislature of 1860 and 

 1861 differed considerably from those recommended by the Commission 

 appointed in 1859 to select the ground. The boundaries of the park 

 recommended by the Commission did not extend so far toward Flat- 

 bush, and extended considerably farther to the westward, so as to take 

 in half the blocks between Eighth avenue and Ninth, from Douglass to 

 Third street. It was in part owing to my advice that the change was 

 made, and I can perhaps answer as well as any one for the motives of 

 it. The reason that I advocated the change, was that it appeared to 

 me evident that the city might obtain, at the same cost, a much larger 

 area of land suitable for a park. We did obtain by the exchange, and 

 without any additional cost to the city, more than twice as much land 

 on the Flatbush side as the Commission had proposed should be taken 



