343 
PARK AND CE-METERY 
TKe Boston ParK System. 
Paper read by yohn C. Olmsted at the Boston Coni’entton of the American Society of Landscape Architects. 
The Common. 
The Common — the pride of patriotic Bostonians — 
is part of a farm bought of William Blackstone, the 
first settler who bought of the Indians, by the Town 
of Boston in 1634. The Town thereupon reserved 
from sale substantially the present Common for a pub- 
lic cow pasture and training field for the militia. 
Charles Street was laid out by description in a vote 
of the Town in 1694, as was also an extension of 
Boylston Street westward to the channel. In 1830 
only was the pasturing of cows upon the Common 
stopped. There had, however, long been a charge for 
the privilege of two dollars a year. 
The T*ubUc Garden. 
W’hat is now the Public Garden was originally a 
part of the Common, but it was cut ofif by the vote 
defining Charles Street passed in 1694. This vote 
seemed to have been intended to define and limit the 
Common proper and to leave the area west of Charles 
Street to be treated simply as a piece of real estate 
to be sold ofif from time to time as land south of 
Boylston Street had been and continued to be sold. At 
any rate, the same vote authorized the Selectmen to 
sell and they did sell land west of Charles Street, be- 
ginning 500 feet south of Beacon Street for rope 
walks, which it was desired to get located out of the 
built up part of the town, as they were dangerous be- 
cause of fire. However, the land where these rope 
walks stood was purchased back by the town in 1824. 
In 1856 an agreement was entered into between the 
Commonwealth, the City, and the Boston & Roxbury 
Mill Corporation by which Arlington Street was de- 
fined and some strips of land conveyed to the City 
for the purpose of extending what is now the Public 
Garden westward to Arlington Street and northward 
to Beacon Street. At that time there was a little up- 
land in what is now the Public Garden, but it was 
The Back Bay. 
mostly beach and salt marsh and mud flat exposed at 
low water. || 
The district of Boston known from early days as the i 
Back Bay, extending from the Common on the East i 
to Brookline, and from Charles River on the north to I 
the neck south of the Boston-Providence R. R. was | 
formerly salt marsh and mud flats broken here and | 
there by winding tidal channels. Before steam en- 
gines were much used and before coal became cheap, 
there was a strong movement for the utilization of I 
an\' convenient water power. During this movement j 
the Boston & Roxbury Mill Corporation acquired by ! 
law the right to use the Back Bay for tidal water | 
power. In 1821 a causeway was completed along the ! 
south margin of Charles River from the corner of 
Beacon & Charles Streets where the upland ended, I 
westerly to Brookline. This causeway being known 
as the Mill Dam, and now as Beacon Street, was made 
wide enough for a toll road which not only became at 
once an important thoroughfare to Brookline, Brigh- 
ton, and other suburban towns, and as it began at the 
most fashionable residence district of Boston, Bea- 
con Hill, it was for many years the main pleasure 
drive of the City. Its usefulness and prestige for this 
purpose has been such that no street railway tracks 
have ever been permitted in this extension of Beacon 
Street east of Massachusetts Avenue. The various ! 
salt marshes within this area had remained private 
property, having always been valued for the sake of | 
the salt hay crop. Gradually with the growth of popu- 
lation and the filling in and sale in lots of the other ; 
tidal mill ponds and shallow margins about the origin- 
al city this Back Bay district became valuable enough 
to warrant the cost of filling. The Commonwealth | 
undertook the work and did it on an unusally exten- | 
sive scale. The simple rectangular street system was 
presumably devised by the engineer of the Harbor I 
and Land Commission, a State Board. 
