PARK AND CEMETERY. 
498 
APPROACH TO WEST SIDE PARK, NOVEMBER, 1907, 
paths are necessarily depressed for the 
sake of grade, and the rising ground on 
cither side will lend itself to a very 
handsome landscape treatment. 
At the West Side Avenue entrance 
ample sidewalks and waiting pavilions 
will provide for the crowds. 
This first or formal portion of the 
park leads up to and terminates in an 
important cross axis which forms both 
a fitting climax to what has gone be- 
fore and a suitable opening out into the 
“formal” parts of the park. The treat- 
ment here, like that at the Boulevard, 
was suggested by the topography which 
gives a second bench or tableland. 
The second division of West Side 
level meadow land at Marcy Avenue 
and to extend to the Hackensack river 
frontage. It is planned to make here 
a great athletic field with amusement 
and recreation features and a lake. This 
lake will be an important factor in the 
scenery as viewed from other sections 
of the park. It will be discernible as 
far back as the plaza at the Hudson 
Boulevard, and go far towards tying 
the different parts together. 
The athletic field proper will have 
the distinction of being the largest play- 
ground in the world, and it is planned 
to provide such facilities for outdoor 
sports as have been found very popular 
in the newer park systems throughout 
the country. Ample areas are arranged 
for baseball, tennis and general sports, 
and a field house with locker facilities 
will be located about midway of the 
field. This playfield on what is now 
covered by the Hackensack meadows 
will comprise about sixty-nine acres, ex- 
clusive of another smaller tract between 
Lowland Drive and the Hackensack 
river. It will be about three times the 
size of the beautiful green lawn of Cen- 
tral Park, where thousands of Man- 
hattan’s children congregate daily. Of 
the athletic fields of New York City, 
the largest, which is now the largest in 
the world, is the forty-acre parade 
ground adjoining Prospect Park, Brook- 
lyn, which has twenty baseliall dia- 
monds, eleven cricket fields, and space 
for lawn tennis and other games. The 
West Side Park playfield will l)e half 
as large again as this one. 
In the decorative treatment of the 
several sections of the park the sur- 
roundings have been carefully consid- 
ered. Exotic trees and shrubs have 
been used only in the formal sections, 
while native trees and shrubs have been 
grouped and massed to develop the 
natural l>eauties of the informal regions. 
By means of heavy mass pl.'intations 
along the northerly and southerly 
boundaries the city with its busy life is 
excluded. 
broad plaza by means of double gate- 
ways for driveways and paths. This 
plaza is suggested topographically by 
the comparatively level hill-top. Its 
purpose, besides giving a strong digni- 
fied introduction, serves to care for any 
congestion of traffic. 
At the westerly end of the plaza, the 
driveways unite and the paths converge 
towards the single roadway. The 
double driveways are made to descend 
more rapidly than the paths, so that the 
latter are here several feet higher and 
each on a platform. The steep hillside 
down to West Side Avenue offers fine 
opportunities for good effects with 
trees and flowers. The drivewav and 
Park opens out upon a beautiful ex- 
panse of rolling landscape, somewhat 
depressed through the center and treat- 
ed as a quiet rolling lawn, supported on 
either side by a wooded knoll. Many 
vistas lengthwise, crosswise, and diagon- 
ally through this section have been 
worked out with great care. Located 
in this section is a natural pool and a 
meandering stream leading to the lake 
beyond, two wading pools for the small 
children and an administration build- 
ing placed where it will be convenient 
of access from all parts of the park 
and yet not unduly conspicuous. 
The third and last division of the 
park may be said to begin with the 
