PARK SITES CHOSE 



131 



referred to "the State fair grounds and LaKe Weequahie, 

 with its eighty-five acres of watery expanse," and said : "As 

 this park will be nearer Elizabeth than Newark, Union 

 County citizens are rejoicing at the philanthropy of the 

 Essex commissioners." 



My own convictions were quite fully stated in a letter to 

 Commissioner Murphy, dated Saturday evening, May 23, 

 1896, w^hich was as follows : 



"Dear Mr. Murphy: Mr. Peck and I have spent the 

 afternoon looking over "West Newark," Weequahic and the 

 southern parkway question. The situation troubles me. A 

 double track on Elizabeth avenue at once disposes of any 

 prospect of making a park in that vicinity a part of a cred- 

 itable connective park system. It is the only avenue avail- 

 able or worth considering for parkway purposes. The width 

 is only fifty or sixty feet between the curb lines. Another 

 track there will make it merely a tramway thoroughfare, 

 like Frelinghuysen avenue — both dangerous and unsightly 

 — and preclude any thought of ever making it a parkway 

 approach. 



"If the Board of Works will grant the franchise regard- 

 less of facts or conditions, we have then to meet the situa- 

 tion of a site for an important park of the county system, 

 isolated from suitable driveway approach from the great 

 center of population of the county, bounded on both longi- 

 tudinal sides by railroads; a swamp tract with most unat- 

 tractive features at one end, and a cemetery and Union 

 County line at the other — with a large area of swamp in the 

 center, the expense of dredging which opens up a perfect 

 kaleidoscope of possibilities as to cost which no man can now 

 determine. 



COMPLICATIONS IN THE SITUATION. 



"I cannot be frank with you as my colleague and asso- 

 ciate in this enterprise without expressing to you these im- 

 pressions as I looked over these conditions to-day. I was 

 forcibly reminded whether the adverse report of four of the 



