the remote future we cannot but believe that the time will come 

 when it will be to the interest of all concerned to complete such 

 a connection in a properly designed manner. This possibility 

 obviously reinforces the importance of such a through-traffic 

 line as we have suggested along the westerly boundary of the 

 Garden, whether the City does or does not open the independent 

 connection between the north end of the Grand Concourse and 

 Bronx River Parkway. 



There has long been an agitation for a street across the Bronx 

 valley from the end of Burke Avenue on the east to some point 

 on Webster Avenue. This proposal first took the form of a high- 

 level viaduct substantially on the north line of the Garden lands. 

 This was indefinitely postponed because of its excessive cost. 

 The project now comes up again in the form of a descending earth- 

 fill embankment from the end of Burke Avenue, crossing by 

 bridges over the road which connects the Garden with Bronx 

 River Parkway, and over the Bronx River, coming nearly down 

 to the elevation of the meadow along the northerly line of the 

 Garden land at a point between the river and the railroad, thence 

 curving across the northwest corner of the Garden land and rising 

 on an embankment adjacent to the railroad so as to meet the 

 grade of the existing bridge over the railroad at the Woodlawn 

 Road Entrance. This latest proposition, besides being less costly, 

 can be made in its ultimate effect a much less conspicuous in- 

 trusion on the landscape of the Garden than a high-level viaduct. 

 Its immediate effect would be very distressing through the sub- 

 stitution of high, raw earth-banks where many well-grown trees 

 now exist; but if these banks are liberally and skilfully graded and 

 composed of material suitable for the vigorous growth of permanent 

 trees and underplanting, and if they are properly planted, they 

 can be made in due time to furnish a good enframement of the 

 Garden, especially desirable on the railroad side. 



The portion of this embankment road which would parallel 

 the railroad from the north boundary of the Garden to the Wood- 

 lawn Road Entrance bridge would coincide with the west-side 

 through-travel route previously discussed, and if the City under- 

 takes the work it is highly important for the Garden that the 

 grading plans be worked out in such a way that the slopes can 

 be counted on as permanent, that trees can be promptly planted 

 on them and grown to maturity. It would be a shame to permit 

 the work to be done in such a way that after beginning by the 

 destruction of the now-existing trees it would leave the new 

 plantations subject to probable destruction by a future widening 

 of the embankment when the west-side through-route is opened. 



[27] 



