m FIEST COUXTY PAEK SYSTEM 



freeholders' committee. Frank H. Scott, F. W. Baldwin, 

 A. P. Boiler, G. E. Howe and others made earnest and able 

 pleas, nrging early action. But the listening freeholders ap- 

 peared deaf to the appeals, and the conditions of persistent 

 inactivity were continued as before; although Chairman 

 J. B. Bray assured the petitioners "that a simple resolution 

 passed by the committee would not be sufficient to complete 

 the transfer'^ — a fact tliat was gradually beginning to dawn 

 on the minds of those who had heretofore believed that the 

 logic of the situation and merit of the transfer proposition 

 might be a potential factor in the proceedings before the 

 freeholders. 



While the powerful hand of the Consolidated Traction 

 Company was clearly visible back of this inconsistent and 

 continuous inactivity, still it was a condition, not a theory 

 of official inactivity, which confronted the parkways move- 

 ment. Attention was then again turned to the Park Com- 

 mission. Here much the same uncertainty existed. What- 

 ever may have been the cause, the wabbling attitude of that 

 board, aside from its executive session statements, was an 

 indisputable factor of large proportions in still farther ex- 

 tending the uncertainty of the conditions. 



The commission was appealed to. The board was im- 

 plored to galvanize some life into its repeated claims of 

 intention. It was asked to show by its acts, as well as by its 

 words, what it meant ; and was reminded that, '^af ter the re- 

 peated reiteration of its plans and purposes as regards these 

 avenues, both the friends and most of the opponents of the 

 county park undertaking had formerly accepted that ac- 

 tion as final,'' and that it was now being currently reported 

 "that the commission did not want the avenues, and that it 

 had never intended to make them parkwaj^s." 



From the records it appears that the elements of uncer- 

 tainty as to these parkways were also acutely active 

 within the Park Board rooms by or before the summer of 

 1899. At the meeting of August 1 of that year, Commis- 

 sioner Shepard's motion was adopted requesting the land- 

 scape architects "to make a special report on the proper 



