PARK AND CEME.TERY 
367 
eat part is necessarily entirely lacking. Or, as an altern- 
ative, this park (if limited tO' its present area, 115 
acres, might have been a rectangle as long as the pres- 
ent main body of the park (3,500 feet) and 430 feet 
wider than at present, yet in that case the boundary 
street would have had a total length of one and three- 
quarters miles instead of two and seven-eighths miles. 
As by far the greater part of the expense of construc- 
tion of this park has been its borders, it is obvious that 
a park having the same area could have been provided 
for about two thirds of the actual cost of construction. 
The saving, amounting to some $700,000 might have 
been put into one or more great playfields. The ac- 
quirement of the land for the Fens was begun in 1877 
and in deference to local political opinion a competition 
for plans was held. A New York landscape architect 
was invited to act as judge of the competition after 
having refused to submit a plan in competition, but the 
proposed duty did not appeal to him and he declined. 
.\fter the competition had taken place and after the 
prize had been awarded the same New York architect 
was employed to review the problem and give some 
general advice. One of the first things he did was 
to have a thorough consultation with the City Engi- 
neer. He thus discovered what the competitors who 
submitted plans had apparently not thought to ascer- 
tain — that there was a very serious problem as to what 
should be done by floods in the Stony Brook. This 
brook ran through the low part of Roxbury at such a 
low level that the water in it was set back by tides. As 
usually happens, the brook had been cribbed and con- 
fined by private land-owners and careless street build- 
ers and the buildings on adjoining lands had been set so 
low that cellers were frequently flooded, especially in 
the spring, and at intervals of a few years these floods 
occurring coincidently with extra high tides when the 
seawater is driven into the harbor by easterly gales, not 
only cellers but streets were flooded deep enough for 
boating. The radical remedy, that since adopted, name- 
ly, the construction of a more direct underground 
channel as big as a double track subway tunnel was at 
that time deemed utterly out of the question owing to 
the cost which was estimated at several million dollars. 
The City Engineer’s idea was that the new park should 
be treated frankly as a storage basin, the water in it 
being ordinarly kept salt and the shores steeply sloped 
and pitched with large stones in the manner usual for 
reservoirs. By tide gates the water surface could be 
kept so low that the water of Stony Brook could be 
received and stored during high tide at a low enough 
level to prevent much of the damage to the low position 
of Roxbury. This simple but ugly improvement was, 
of course, felt to be extremely objectionable by the 
New York architect and he set himself the problem of 
devising some modification of it which, while answer- 
ing fairly well the engineering requirements of the 
case, would appear natural and beautiful. A basin at a 
low elevation was taken for granted. It was assumed, 
too, that some sacrifice of area could be made for the 
sake of securing irregular shores and varying slopes 
such as would look natural and agreeable. The diffi- 
culty of protecting these banks from wash when they 
were partly submerged by floods and when violent 
storms would create considerable waves. The idea 
was then adopted of dividing the basin by curving 
cross drives which would evidently be much needed by 
the dense population which is expected to surround the 
park, and to still further diversify the water surface 
by small irregular islets. As a still further deterrent 
of destructive waves a large portion of the surface was 
planned to be kept in salt marsh grass but at a level 
two feet below the natural level which is everywhere 
close to the elevation of mean high water. In figures 
the existing salt marsh was at elevation 10.5 and it was 
^o be lowered to elevation 8.5. 
The City Engineer, after this scheme had been pleas- 
antly explained and discussed, gave it his approval, in 
spite of the reduction of storage capacity of storm 
water which it involved, and the Park Commission im- 
pressed by the ingenious marriage of engineering re- 
quirements and park landscape beauty, employed its 
author to make plans for carrying it out. The pre- 
liminary plans were presented and approved in 1878 
and published later in the annual report for that year. 
The working drawing included a grading plan with one 
foot contours which showed every irregularity of the 
surface desired to simulate a natural appearance and 
which was implicitly and mechanically followed by the 
engineers of the City Engineer’s office in setting stakes 
for the guidance of the foreman in charge of the dis- 
tributing of the filling. The portion of Common- 
wealth Avenue, from Massachusetts Avenue to Brook- 
line Avenue and Beacon Street had been turned over 
to the Park Commission for improvement ; consequent- 
ly its driveway was planned with long sweeping curves 
to harmonize with and lead into the Eenway. The 
two driveways of Commonwealth Avenue east of Mas- 
sachusetts Avenue were extended on curves and 
brought together with one driveway at Charlesgate, 
thus enabling the waterway of that extension of the. 
Pens to be crossed by a single bridge. 
The curvilinear driveway west of Charlesgate to 
Brookline Avenue designed at that time and com- - 
pletely improved was later torn up by direction of 
Mayor Matthews to satisfy the demands of land specu- 
lators owning land on the south side of Commonwealth 
Avenue, who objected to having the main driveway 
swing towards the north side, leaving their land on a 
narrower and less direct driveway. The change great- 
ly diminished the lawn area and increased the area of 
ugly macadam. 
(To be continued.) 
