Bronx Parkway. 



This splendid park development is under the jurisdiction of the 

 Bronx Parkway Commission, organized under Chapter 594 of the Laws 

 of 1907, amended by Chapter 757 of the Laws of 1913. The Parkway, 

 as mapped and now legally approved, is a strip of land having a total 

 area of 1,130 acres, that begins at the north end of Bronx Park and 

 extends northward 15^ miles through the valley of the Bronx River, 

 to the New Kensico Lake Reservation. 



The Bronx Parkway Commission grew out of a suggestion made 

 in 1905 by the New York Zoological Society. The Bronx River was 

 rapidly becoming a menace to health because of the sewage run into it; 

 the lakes in the Zoological Park were becoming open cesspools. The so- 

 lution for these difficulties was found in the Parkway scheme. The Com- 

 mission allows no sewage to empty into the Bronx River. The strip will 

 be pierced by a highway of perfect construction and will become in time 

 a continuous grove. This parkway provides a desirable connection be- 

 tween the City's parks and the enormous areas of picturesque lands 

 acquired by the City in the Croton and Catskill watersheds. 



Wherever practicable, the lands acquired have been made available 

 for recreation purposes, and many tracts are being used for baseball 

 fields, playgrounds, parked areas around stations, etc. The improved 

 Avater conditions have restored to favor swimming pools adequate in 

 number to satisfy the heavy demands imposed for this much-to-be-en- 

 couraged form of recreation. It is planned by judicious planting to so 

 screen certain of these pools that their use will not be impaired with 

 increasing density of population adjacent to the Parkway zone. 



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