160 COMMISSION ON BUILDING DISTRICTS 



Statement by W. A. Murrill, Assistant Director, New York 

 Botanical Garden, Bronx Park, April 15, 1916 

 Factories injure vegetation 



Botanical gardens should be zealously guarded against conditions that 

 factories will most certainly bring. Most of the botanical gardens in Europe 

 have suffered from such conditions and have had to move to the suburbs of 

 cities. The New York Botanical Garden was located in its present position 

 to avoid such conditions and it would seem a pity to impose them upon 

 it now. 



Many of the rare and beautiful plants grown in botanical gardens are 

 extremely sensitive to gases from factories. The fir trees and their rela- 

 tives are particularly sensitive to smoke and dust. Botanical gardens must 

 depend largely upon the character of the people in its immediate neighbor- 

 hood for the protection of jts plants. The beauty and usefulness of bo- 

 tanical gardens, as well as of parks, are not enhanced by ugly buildings and 

 the unfavorable conditions surrounding factories. 



Statement by Frederic B. Pratt, Chairman Brooklyn Committee on 

 City Plan, March 27, 1916 



General approval of Commission's report 



The Executive Committee of the Brooklyn Committee on City Plan has 

 examined with care and with great interest the tentative report of the 

 Commission and has studied the maps proposing districts and restrictions 

 prepared by your experts. 



The Brooklyn Committee desires to congratulate the Commission on 

 the approaching completion of so valuable a piece of work. It is evident 

 to all who have studied the report, plans and proposed resolutions, that the 

 work of the experts has been painstaking to an unusual degree, involving 

 close consideration of the existing conditions and prospective development 

 of individual blocks as well as of districts. 



Brooklyn's inadequate park system 



In seeking to formulate plans and regulations which might apply equally 

 to districts in the different boroughs at equivalent distances from the busi- 

 ness center of Manhattan, we feel, however, and venture to suggest, that 

 the peculiar needs of Brooklyn and the desires of Brooklyn people have 

 been to some extent subordinated to a general plan. 



For instance, the Bronx is already provided with a magnificent system 

 of parks. Brooklyn is not at all equally favored, and it is self-evident that 

 no equal system of open spaces can be provided in Brooklyn at equal dis- 

 tances from the business center of Manhattan. It seems to us to follow 

 from this that much stricter building regulations should be imposed on 

 Brooklyn territory, so that the open spaces which cannot be provided in 

 large areas may be secured in a measure through closer restrictions on the 

 amount of land to be covered by buildings. 



More stringent restrictions desired for Brooklyn 



We believe, moreover, that it is the general desire of the people of 

 Brooklyn that the borough should never attain to the congestion which is 

 found in Manhattan, but we notice on the map of tentative area districts that 

 it is proposed to permit the same dimensions for residential buildings which 

 are deemed proper for the greater part of Manhattan, to extend in Brook- 



