56 REPORT OF THE 



control public action, however here and there may be found 

 those who fail to agree with it ; and by those who have any 

 opportunity to serve it, it ought, as it seems to your Com- 

 mittee, to be at once and gladly obeyed. 



Yet, of course, it is already difficult and expensive, and 

 with the rapid sweep of population over districts hitherto 

 unoccupied it every day becomes more so, to secure within the 

 city limits any important addition to the number of our 

 Parks, or any considerable enlargement of their present 

 territorial extent. The sum of three hundred thousand 

 dollars (8300,009) has been put into the hands of the Park 

 Commission the present year for this special purpose ; but, 

 after the most careful consideration by them of the most 

 effective and economical use to be made of the money, it has 

 become quite certain that only two, or at most three, small 

 patches, rather than Parks, can be added by means of it to the 

 public pleasure-grounds ; and that these must be located, 

 each of them, at comparatively a long distance from the prin- 

 cipal centres of population. These small open squares are 

 extremely important for the families living near them ; and 

 we ought to be grateful, as we are, for the opportunity and the 

 means of securing them for such pleasant neighborhood-use. 

 But of course they do not even help to meet the more general 

 need ; and if any way can be found of doing this, even to 

 what must be for the present a limited extent, especially if it 

 be a way to make more ample the one central and delightful 

 Park in which the whole city has a pride, it ought, in the 

 judgment of your Committee, to be at once most gladly 

 embraced. 



It seems to us, therefore, an occasion foi" general and hearty 

 congratulation that such an opportunity does present itself, 

 in lands rising to the crest of the city, in immediate vicinity 

 to Prospect Park ; in other words, in what are known as the 

 ''East Side lands" still remaining unsold, and situated 

 between the Eastern Parkway and the line which divides the 

 city from Flatbush. These lands cover an area of nearly or 

 quite seventy acres in extent, which is wholly unoccupied 



