PARK AND 
CEM ET ERY. 
4-20 
A GREAT WATER PARK for JAMAICA BAY, N. Y. 
Greater New York needs new dock 
facilities as much as subways, and if 
she does not get them, her commerce 
will cease to develop along with her 
population. This means, of course, 
that other cities will get the com- 
merce that New York loses. Most 
of her best deep water-front is already 
taken up, and no great extent is to 
be had without dredging on a large 
scale. If it can be dredged, and if 
ships can be got inside, there seems 
to be no better place for k great meet- 
ing place of sea-going trade than 
Jamaica Bay, which, as most New 
Yorkers know, is practically a salt 
water lake close to the ocean and 
ten miles nearer Europe than Battery 
Park. In May, 1906, Mayor McClel- 
lan appointed a commission of three 
engineers to consider the possibili- 
ties of Jamaica Bay as a solution of 
the city dock problem. The commis- 
sion, while agreeing on the general 
practicableness of making the bay into 
a great harbor, differed wddely in their 
layout of the system of docks and 
wharves, and issued a majority and 
minority report. A map of the latter, 
showing the park plan of Mr. H. A. 
Caparn, the New York landscape 
architect, is here reproduced. The 
map explains itself as far as the gen- 
eral scheme is concerned. Both re- 
ports propose to dredge material 
from the bottom of the bay to raise 
the swamps and lowlands to the 
requisite height and deepen the chan- 
nels in the same operation. The 
minority report calls for depths up 
to 40 feet. Both reports propose to 
deepen the channel through Rocka- 
way Inlet to the ocean hy dredging, 
but the majority report, in addition 
would build a jetty 2,000 feet into the 
ocean to intercept the sand which is 
continually carried by the currents 
from the east into the inlet. 
These docks, of course, will be 
modern in size, arrangement and in 
the systems of transit, yards and fac- 
tories, by which they will be served, 
and will be, in consequence, much 
more effective than the antiquated 
things that have received our foreign 
trade for generations; so that, con- 
sidering the tediousness and difficulty 
of dredging and construction, the vast 
increase of commerce necessary to 
fill up the 2,5 miles or so of docks 
that the shores of the bay would 
carry, it will certainly be many years 
before they are all occupied. New' 
York’s commerce obviously cannot go 
on increasing at its present rate for- 
ever; from one cause or another 
there must come a time when it will 
slacken or suspend its growth. More- 
over, New Jersey, w'hich has excellent 
facilities for similar development in 
'Newark Bay and the Hackensack 
Meadows which are on the mainland 
and crossed by most of the main 
lines of railroad, cannot be expected 
to lag behind in the race for business, 
so that, all things considered, it will 
certainly be many years, perhaps cen- 
turies, before the shores of Jamaica 
Bay are filled up and the docks and 
w'harves have to be extended to the 
interior of the bay. 
Until this time comes, it is pro- 
posed by' Mr. Caparn to utilize the 
flats within the bay as depositories 
for the material wdiich must be 
dredged from the channels to make 
them navigable, and to use them as 
a great water park for all kinds of 
aquatic sports, sailing, rowing, motor 
boating, steamboat excursions, swim- 
ming, fishing, and even summer camp- 
ing. There are about 4,600 acres of 
these flats, mostly submerged at high 
tide and already belonging to the 
city, so that little more than the ex- 
be mainly by a boulevard running 
alongside the Long Island Railroad 
W'hich crosses the bay and by excur- 
sion steamboats which w'ould leave 
various points along the shores, and 
visit places of interest on the islands. 
Planting should be kept generally low, 
mainly of native shrubs and plants, and 
the whole treatment calculated to pre- 
serve the sentiment of flatness, monot- 
ony and vast extent which now give 
the region its individuality and per- 
haps its great charm. 
We are thus left to imagine a vast 
circle of commerce, an apparently 
endless chain of great docks and 
wharves served by a w'aterway three- 
quarters of a mile wide dotted with all 
kinds of shipping from ocean liners 
downward, and all enfolding numbers 
of spreading green islands w'ith the 
pleasure , craft of the people of a 
great city' riding on the ample and tor- 
tuous channels. This is surely a pic- 
ture of a superb civic possession, a 
scene unparalleled among the munici- 
pal parks of the world, and having 
the advantage of costing so little that 
the city would not feel the expense. 
pensc of raising them a few feet 
above high water is needed to secure 
for Greater New York a pleasure 
ground quite unique in character, 
charm and usefulness. As the waters 
must be depened, and places found 
for the c,\'cavated material, the filling 
may be said to cost nothing. Access 
to this archipelago of low lying is- 
lands and tortuous channels would 
water park scheme is that of the 
Minority Report of iMr. William (i. 
rV.rd, as the author says, not claim- 
ing authority as an engineer, but be- 
cause the scheme in its broad lines 
not only offers better possibilities of 
aesthetic treatment, but because it 
seems simpler .and mf)rc practical in 
oper.ation, and tlierefoi'c, in the long 
run, more cconomic.al. 
