4G 



and to restore our advantage we had then been compelled, after wait- 

 ing as long as we could, to undertake our Water Works. If we had 

 not constructed them when we did what would Brooklyn be now? 

 Simply a poor suburb of New York. In the same way we were stimu- 

 lated, after New York had made it necessary, to build the Academy 

 of Music. In one thing only have we yet shown ourselves able to ex- 

 ercise the forecast needful to the proper development of the advantages 

 of our city without waiting for a ruinous disadvantage 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 clei-ks 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 hopelessly 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 taxation. If not it 

 was certainly very questionable whether we could afford to enter upon 

 any plan the carrying out of which "would involve the City in a con- 

 siderable expenditure. In short if we could not settle this point satis- 

 factorily, 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 Ridgcwood 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 com- 

 plete examination to the question of boundaries, approaches and en- 

 trances; a question properly antecedent to the question of a plan of 



