421 
PARK AND CEME-TE-RY 
f 
Parks 
Thte Boston ParK System 
Paper read by yohn C. Olmsted at the Boston Conve7ttion of the America?! Society of Landscape Architects. 
(Continued.) 
The Rvvtrway. 
The idea of having the Riverway and the Leverett 
Pond section of Olmsted Park instead of the pro- 
posed formal boulevard by way of Parker Hill, origin- 
ated from the creative imagination of the designer of 
The Fens, Frederick Law Olmsted. The idea was 
based on the general principle of looking for every 
available opportunity for preserving, in connection with 
park work, such beautiful elements of existing scenery 
as can be used directly or by adaptation. Here was a 
salt creek fringed with salt marshes. The boundary 
between the City of Boston and the Town of Brook- 
line followed the thread of the stream. A good part 
of the Boston side had a beautiful tree-clad bank with 
suburban residences above it. Further south it was a 
marsh. On the Brookline side, below Aspinwall Av- 
enue, the beautiful valley was disfigured by the rail- 
road with the usual steep gravel slope covered with 
cinders and weeds and fenced. At Longwood Sta- 
tion there was, in addition, a group of cheap dwellings. 
For some distance north of Washington Street the 
cheapest kind of dwellings and tenements pressed upon 
and practically obliterated the stream. About forty 
houses were condemned in this locality. Most of these 
houses were unpainted and more or less dilapidated. 
The citizens who occupied them were commonly re- 
ferred to at town meetings and elsewhere as “from the 
marsh.” 
Unless some extensive and expensive improvement 
of the whole valley were to be soon made, it was seem- 
ingly inevitable that this squalid and unsanitary occu- 
pation of it would cover all parts of this valley and 
discourage good occupation of the neighborhood. 
The idea of preserving the valley and making it a 
feature of the parkway system was accepted. The 
greatest care had to be taken to adjust the boundary 
on the Boston side which was also the line of the main 
drive, between the trees and topographical conditions 
on the one hand and the houses and demands of land 
owners on the other. 
The waterway was changed to fresh water, being 
supplied by abundant springs and by the brook flow- 
ing through Brookline. The exigencies of design re- 
quired most of the old creek channel to be filled and a 
new waterway to be created. A border mound was 
raised along the railroad to hide it. The shores of the 
waterway were everywhere filled with gravel to hold 
back the more or less movable mud. 
Various bridges were introduced where necessary 
^ or desirable. The preliminary designs for these were 
prepared by the landscape architects and put in proper 
architectural shape by Messrs. Shepley, Rutan and 
Coolidge and the City Engineer’s office, except the 
great Longwood Bridge, the engineering part of which 
was done by Messrs. French and Bryant of Brookline. 
As in the case of The Fens every portion of the sur- 
face except such limited areas as had trees growing 
upon them was regarded according to carefully studied 
grading plans. 
Olmsted Park 
The two parks originally named Leverett Park and 
Jamaica Park were combined and named Olmsted 
Park out of compliment to Frederick Law Olmsted 
after he retired owing to feeble health. The park com- 
prises an unusual variety of scenery, including Jamaica 
Pond, Leverett Pond and other ponds and pools, two 
wooded knolls, a brook, grassy slopes, abrupt ledges, 
and extensive wooded banks. With so many inter- 
esting and picturesque scenes the main effort of the 
designers was to preserve and develop each according 
to its essential characteristics. 
The site of Leverett Pond was a much larger cat- 
tail swamp extending on the west to Pond Avenue. 
To provide an attractive, secluded drive and walk en- 
tirely within the park on this side of the swamp, a 
