366 
PARK AND CEMETERY 
The Boston ParK System. 
Paper read by "john C, Olmsted^ at the Boston Convention of the Americati Society oj Landscape Architects. 
(Continued*) 
The Fens. 
The shape of the Fens can only be defined briefly 
as shapeless. It has an irregular central body averag- 
ing about 1,000 feet wide, with a length, from Boyl- 
ston Bridge to Mrs. Jack Gardner’s “Fenway Palace” 
of about 3,500 feet. From^ this body project 6 arms. 
Northward of Boylston Bridge is the arm called 
Charlesgate. This was laid out as a so-called “en- 
trance” to the Park. It originally extended, for this 
reason, northward, only to Beacon Street, but when the 
waterway plan was adopted it was extended a block 
further north to Charles River. It is now about 1,500 
feet long. Its width was arbitrarily established at 300 
feet, but as the land owners neglected to stipulate for 
a street within this area the Park Commission later 
secured a strip of 50 feet wide on each side for streets, 
on condition of completely improving them at the ex- 
pense of the park fund. 
The other entrances are Boylston Entrance, 80 feet 
wide to Massachusetts Avenue ; Westland Entrance 
300 feet wide to Parker Street ; Huntington Entrance 
200 feet wide to Huntington Avenue ; Parker Hill En- 
trance, from 300 to 500 feet wide to Huntington Ave- 
nue ; and Longwood Entrance, originally 200 feet wide 
but after the waterway plan was adopted, increased to 
350 feet wide. 
The peculiar shape of the Eens and its entrances 
was due mainly to the limitations of cost for land which 
the opponents of the project in the City Council suc- 
ceeded in fastening upon the ordinances authorizing 
the park. The limit of price of 10 cents per square foot 
for the land was stipulated. It is probable that some 
of those who voted for this limitation fully believed 
that it would indirectly kill the whole scheme, thus 
saving the city much money. Not only did it not save 
money, but it resulted in a very great increase in the 
cost of construction and, what was worse, in an enor- 
mous increase in the cost of construction in proportion 
to area. The original area of this park was about lOO; 
acres. This at 10 cents per square foot made the cost 
of land $435,600, or $4,356 per acre. But the cost for 
construction has been over $18,500 per acre, a cost 
probably without precedent in the history of park 
making. Eranklin Park which is well supplied with 
stone bridges, buildings and other expensive structures,, 
cost only $4,600. The cost of filling the park in the 
Back Bay, had it been located on salt marshes not 
complicated by the channels of Stony Brook and Mud- 
dy River, would probably not have been more than 
$4,000 per acre, so it is safe to say that the necessity 
forced upon the Park Commission, of locating and' 
shaping the park to suit the demand for the land own- 
ers, even allowing for a greater price for salt marshes 
elsewhere but near by, cost the city, so far as the Park 
is concerned, over a million dollars more than it would' 
if the Park Commission had been left free to act on 
their own judgment. It is true the city in that case, 
would have had to construct the Stony Brook flood 
channel now nearing completion sooner than it did. 
Even if this park had to be located as it was where the- 
deepest and widest channels intersected the salt marsh- 
es and even if it had to be improved in such a way that 
the floods of Stony Brook could be taken care of in and 
through it, the park might have been twice as large, 
yet less expensive if the shape had been a rectangle 
with its length say three times its width. The present 
periphery of the park and its entrances is nearly three 
miles. If the park had been a rectangle half a mile, 
wide and one mile long, its boundary drives would^ 
have been only a trifle longer than they now are, yet 
the park, including border streets, would have had an 
area of 320 acres instead of only 115 acres as at pres- 
ent. The enormous advantages of this increase of 205 
acres in size may be gathered from the statement that 
it would have afforded space for a play field of nearly 
that area, a most important feature in which the pres- 
