PLANNING and DEVELOPING a CITY PARK SYSTEM 
(Continued) 
(From report by Olmsted Brothers, Landscape Architects, 
Brookline, Mass., to the Park Board of Portland, Ore.) 
11 — Acquiring Land and Planning Im- 
provements 
Only recently has it begun to be 
realized what enormous advantages 
are to be gained by locating parks 
and parkways so as to take advantage 
of beautiful natural scenery. The 
most expensive large parks, Central 
Park, New York, and Prospect Park, 
Pmooklyn, were located without tak- 
ing advantage of the magnificent nat- 
ural landscapes of the rivers and bays 
which distinguish New York and 
Brooklyn. There are many similar 
cases. Formerly people built with the 
backs of their houses upon the rivers 
and lakes, thus not only excluding the 
public from continuous access to them 
but ruining their beauty. Where 
land along the banks of rivers or 
along the shores of a lake can, in a 
city, be fairly well spared from com- 
mercial uses, public squares, parks 
and parkways should be located upon 
them. Extremely steep and rough 
hills and bluffs have been occupied 
for dwellings and other buildings as 
at Pittsburg. San Francisco, and many 
other cities, that should have been 
taken for picturesque recreation 
grounds, with dri^'es above, command- 
ing magnificent views, as at Riverside 
and Morningside Parks in New York. 
In addition to taking advantage of 
beautiful natural scenery, parks and 
parkwaj'S may often be located so as 
to secure very important sanitarj^ ad- 
vantages through the improvement of 
ill-drained areas, particularly low-ly- 
ing lands on lake shores or along riv- 
ers subject to floods. Marked econ- 
omy in municipal development may 
also be effected by laying out park- 
ways and parks, while land is cheap, 
so as to embrace streams that carry 
at times more water than can be taken 
care of by drain pipes of ordinary 
size. Thus brooks or little rivers 
which would otherwise become nuis- 
ances that would some day have to 
be put in large underground conduits 
at enormous expense, may be made 
the occasion for delightful local 
pleasure grounds or attractive park- 
ways. Such improvements add great- 
ly to the value of adjoining properties, 
which would otherwise have been de- 
preciated by the erection on the low 
lands of the cheapest class of dwell- 
ings or by ugly factories, stables and 
other commercial establishments. 
Leverett Park, in the Boston Park 
system, is an instance in point. A 
cat-tail marsh, many acres in extent, 
where, no doubt, only the poorest 
class of houses, stables and the like 
would otherwise have been built, was 
made into a beautiful lake. 
A city having many or extensive 
opportunities for parks and park- 
ways should promptly avail itself of 
them even at serious financial sacri- 
fice. Such a city may wisely mort- 
gage its future wealth much more 
heavily by the issue of long-term 
bonds for the acquirement and preser- 
vation of beautiful natural scenery 
than a city relatively devoid of such 
opportunities, provided there is a rea- 
sonable probability of attracting to 
itself thereby well-to-do and wealthy 
families, because such improvements 
tend to draw to the city wealth, the 
taxation of which may more than re- 
pay the city for the outlay. The same 
is true, as to sections of a city having 
natural advantages for residences. 
It is particularly urgent that a city 
having beautiful local scenery adapted 
for parks and parkways should se- 
cure the land betimes lest these nat- 
ural advantages be destroyed or irre- 
parably injured by the owners. Many 
of the older cities would now pay 
very high prices for land covered with 
the primeval forest which the early 
inhabitants destroyed and which 
might once have been obtained for a 
few dollars an acre. Efforts are now 
being made in many cities to secure 
even narrow and unsatisfactory boule- 
vards which might have cost nothing 
for land besides being wider and 
handsomer if those who originally de- 
termined the width of the principal 
streets had drawn the side lines twice 
as far apart. Even now, opportuni- 
ties for widening, at very moderate 
cost, trunk thoroughfares outside the 
closely built area of most cities are 
being carelessly allowed to pass by. 
Unless parks properly distributed, lo- 
cated and bounded to best preserve 
beautiful local scenery and to accom- 
plish the essential purposes they are 
designed for are secured while the 
land is comparatively unoccupied by 
expensive improvements, they rarely 
can be secured at all. To take an ex- 
treme case one has only to consider 
how utterly impossible it would now 
be for the city of New York to se- 
cure on Manhattan Island another 
such park as Central Park. But even 
if a sufficient area of land for a park 
should ’remain vacant near the heart 
of a city it is almost certain to rise 
to a value that is prohibitory and this 
alone is a sufficient reason for taking 
parks betimes. There is still a large 
vacant area west of the Boston Park 
called The Fens but whereas the land 
occupied by The Fens cost, twenty- 
six years ago, only 10 cents a square 
foot, or about $4,300.00 on acre, this 
vacant land adjoining it would doubt- 
less cost now considerably more than 
$2.00 a square foot on an average, or 
over $86,000 an acre. 
There is a very commendable disin- 
clination on the part of legislatures 
to pass laws authorizing long term 
municipal loans and in favor of keep- 
ing a comparatively low limit on the 
total amount which cities are allowed 
to borrow. But the case of loans for 
purchase of land, especially land for 
a park system is very decidedly dif- 
ferent from that of loans for most 
other municipal improvements. It is 
unwise for cities, as for business men 
and corporations, to borrow more 
than a safe fraction of their market- 
able assets or so much that the inter- 
est and the annual sinking fund pay- 
