PARK COMMISSION 
It is perhaps well in making a report of the Park Commission 
for the year 1912, to recall the circumstances of its beginnings. 
In the year 1906, an association of citizens, called The Greater 
Park League, was formed to consider the establishment of a park 
system for the City of Cincinnati. As the result of this movement, 
to quote from the records of the Board of Public Service: 
"On June 25, 1906, the City Council passed an ordinance, reading 
as follows: 
'Be it ordained by the Council of the City of Cincinnati, State 
of Ohio: 
'Section I. That there is hereby appropriated from the Park 
Extension Fund, the sum of fifteen thousand ($15,000) dollars to 
provide for the expense of making a comprehensive and adequate 
plan for improving or completing the improvement of any parks 
or boulevards in the City of Cincinnati.' " 
On July 5, 1906, the following resolution was adopted by the 
Board of Public Service: 
''RESOLVED: That the following be and are hereby appointed to 
serve, without compensation, on the New Park Commission, for the 
purpose of devising plans and systems for the contemplated exten- 
sion of Park Systems: 
Max Senior, 
Henry Rattermann, 
Wm. B. Poland, 
L. A. Ault, 
Wm. Salway; 
and the Clerk be instructed to officially notify them of their appoint- 
ment, with the request that they meet the Board for a conference, 
July 18, 1906, at 3 P. M." 
Under the authority of the ordinance and the resolution ap- 
pointing this commission, it made a careful canvass of the country's 
expert landscape architects, finally choosing Mr. Geo. E. Kessler, 
of Geo. E. Kessler & Co., Kansas City, as the man best fitted for 
the work of laying out a comprehensive plan for parks and park- 
ways in Cincinnati. 
Through the joint efforts of the Greater Park League and the 
New Park Commission, a Park Act, drafted by the commission, was 
passed through the State Legislature on May 19, 1907 (99v. 440). 
The commission then received the thanks of the administration and 
was dismissed. 
