the development of the vicinity of the Museum, discussed in the 

 following section, Part V, necessitates a revision of the vehicular 

 approach to the Museum and of the connection along its west- 

 erly side with the roads in the Fruticetum. As to the latter con- 

 nection, it would be almost as undesirable to force vehicles, cir- 

 culating within the Garden between the vicinity of the Frutice- 

 tum and the vicinity of the Museum and points further south, 

 to go outside the Garden enclosure into the contemplated through- 

 travel road and back again, as it is to force out into Pelham Park- 

 way the vehicles that need to cross the Bronx River in the 

 southerly part of the Garden. And for reasons already indi- 

 cated we believe it would be far better to provide such an in- 

 terior circuit west of the Museum and the Water Gardens, even 

 at the expense of considerable local regrading and replanting, 

 than to maintain permanently the present road in the heart of 

 the Garden northeast of the Museum. 



The location of the present east-and-west road south of the 

 Museum through the center of the valley which lies between the 

 Museum and the ridge northeast of Conservatory Range No. I, 

 and the concurrent splitting of this valley into two halves of con- 

 trasting treatment — the northeast half occupied on the Museum 

 axis by a formal approach to the Museum which begins abruptly 

 in the very middle of the valley unit, while the southwest half is 

 treated as an open informal landscape — is to us very distress- 

 ing and esthetically self-contradictory. Some permanent cross- 

 connection for the interior circulation of vehicular traffic some- 

 where between the Museum and Conservatory Range No. I seems 

 essential. The best place for it we are not yet sure of, because 

 it is involved with three other very perplexing problems which 

 will be discussed in the next section of the Report. 



Briefly there seem to be four possible solutions: One would 

 be to leave the cross-road substantially where it is but to unify 

 the valley by applying the same kind of landscape treatment to 

 both its halves; either by extending a generally formal treat- 

 ment southwesterly across the valley from the Museum to the 

 opposite ridge, this treatment being traversed by the cross-road; 

 or by curtailing the formal treatment to the immediate vicinity 

 of the Museum and leaving the entire heart of the valley treated 

 informally but still traversed by the cross-road. A second would 

 be to shift the cross-road much closer to the Museum and leave 

 the entire heart of the valley open for treatment as a single unit, 

 either informal or formal, but undivided by a road. A third 

 would accomplish a similar result by shifting the cross-road much 

 further from the Museum to a position fairly well up the slope 



[30] 



