THE PARltWAYS 



175 



ayeniies, betTveen the proposed larger parks, well adapted 

 for parkway purposes, and already laid out and constructed 

 at county expense ; and 



Third — Availability. As these parkways, with Park ave- 

 nue on the north and Central avenue on the south of the 

 populous portions of the county between the Passaic River 

 and the Orange Mountain would, with the Branch Brook 

 Park on the east and the mountain parkway and parks on 

 the crest of the first mountain, constitute a compact, and, 

 to that extent, complete ^^park system" in the heart of the 

 county, readily and directly reached from any of the four 

 sides of the elongated square of parks and parkways that 

 would be thus formed. 



AN- IMPORTANT PARKWAY. 



In order to utilize the more accessible and important 

 of these parkways, Central Avenue — important as being 

 by far the most convenient to the people of both Newark 

 and the Oranges — and to avoid the expense of new and 

 costly construction, or the removal of the railway tracks 

 then on the avenue in Newark, as far as the East Orange 

 line, the plan from the southern division of the Branch 

 Brook Park included the use of Sussex and Ninth ave- 

 nues and Grove street, or Sixteenth street, for the direct 

 connection with the park as the eastern terminus, and a 

 direct extension by a zig-zag, easy-grade Swiss road up 

 the mountain to the mountain parkway, for the western 

 park connection of the system. 



The advisability and practicability of this method of 

 establishing a convenient and economical county park sys- 

 tem — one that could be promptly and at comparatively 

 small cost carried out, and at the same time constitute the 

 basic framework for the future park and parkway develop- 

 ment within the county — strongly appealed to the mem- 

 bers of the first commission. I am not aware that any 

 doubt ever existed as to the practical execution of the plan 

 on the lines indicated. For years the steep grades and "old- 

 fashioned" straight up and down roads of the Orange 



