116 



FIEST COUXTY PAEK SYSTE^^I 



possible or probable park sites were receiving attention dur- 

 ing 1895, no suggestion had come before the new commis- 

 sion favoring a ^'AYest Side" park, and not one of tlie com- 

 missioners had advocated such a location. 



This was the status of affairs when, on January 30, 1896, 

 a letter from Mayor Lubkuecher was received. It called 

 attention to the need of the "Hill section'' of the city for a 

 park and bespoke favorable consideration of the claims of 

 the people in that vicinity. Active agitation toward press- 

 ing those claims did not, however, begin until it became well 

 known through the local associations in that district that 

 the East Side park had become an established fact. Then 

 the trouble began, and extended "'all along the line." 



If there was ever a public board literally bombarded with 

 communications and delegations by which a strenuous con- 

 stituency can bring pressure to bear toward favorable offi- 

 cial action, it was the Essex County Park Commission, as 

 the recipient object of that attack and siege during the 

 year 1896. 



First, on March 12, came a committee of citizens urging 

 that a park was '^a necessity in the West End." This visit 

 was followed two weeks later by a resolution from the Xew- 

 ark City Council favoring the project for a park in the 

 western part of the cit}^ On the same day a committee rep- 

 resenting the ^Yest End Improvement Association, includ- 

 ing Mayor Lubkuecher, A. B. Twitchell. Commissioner 

 Frederick Kuhn, of the Board of Works, E. G. Eobertson, 

 president of the association, and George H. Forman, made a 

 forcible presentation of the subject before the commission. 

 The speakers dwelt at length upon the imperative need of a 

 park in proximity to the large public school there ; they 

 referred to the healthy location of the '^Hiir' district ; con- 

 tended that there were "close upon 70,000 people in that 

 western portion of the city, or nearh* a third of the popula- 

 tion of Xewark;"' and added that it was their belief "that 

 ninety per cent, of the people of Essex County were op- 

 posed to the Waverly Park site." They asked for a park 

 *'cQiivei].ieiit to the populationj'' such as tk© proposed site m 



