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FIEST COUOTY PAEK SYSTEM 



and correctly these earl}^ advocates of the Triangle Park 

 saw the possibilities which have, by latter events, become 

 actualities. 



While this discussion was going on, nothing toward prac- 

 tical results then came of it. These advanced thinkers were, 

 like so many of their class, a little ahead of their time in 

 the agitation, and it was, therefore, left for the first Park 

 Commission of 1894 to take up the question where their pre- 

 decessors in advocating the project had left it. With the 

 first commission there was no difference in conviction, 

 either in the minds of the commissioners or of the land- 

 scape experts as to the desirability of establishing a park 

 there; indeed, the reasons, as they then appeared, in favor, 

 were so many and so ample as to have left no question of 

 doubt, that I had ever heard expressed, upon that question. 



OPPOSITION" TO PARK LOCATION. 



iWhen the second commission of 1895 was appointed, an 

 entirely different situation was presented. For some reason 

 which I have never been able to fully account for, the two 

 new members of the board, Messrs. P. M. Shepard and 

 Franklin Murphy, were radically and persistently opposed 

 to the project. When, during the summer of 1895, the sub- 

 ject was referred to as one that in all probability would 

 require the attention of the commission at a later time, the 

 triangle was slightingly referred to in the commission as "a 

 back door park.^' When later the petitions began to come 

 in, urging favorable action, the opposition gradually in- 

 creased, instead of the reverse. 



In September a long petition was earnestly presented by 

 a citizens' committee from East Orange and Orange. This 

 document recited the reasons for the park — ^the natural ad- 

 vantages, the proximity to dense populations, the attitude 

 of public opinion in favor of it, the reasonable cost, etc. The 

 communication bore the signatures of Frank H. Scott, 

 chairman ; William Pierson, L. D. Gallison, W. S. Macy, I. 

 Bayard Dodd, E. V. Z, T^ane and E. W. Hawkesworth. It 



