741 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
PARK BUILDING UNDER WAY 
The “budget exhibit” of Greater New 
York, an illustrated exposition of how 
the city spends its money, gave some 
valuable information about the Brook- 
lyn park system. 
Some of the interesting pictures 
showing recent improvements in the 
Brooklyn parks are reproduced here. 
The photographs presented a graphic 
story of the policy of Park Commission- 
er Michael J. Kennedy of Brooklyn in 
administering the work of his depart- 
ment. Briefly, this policy is this ; 
Improve — not acquire. 
Commissioner Kennedy doesn't hold 
to the idea that more land should be 
obtained by the Park Department. In- 
stead, he says, let there be vast improve- 
ment on the land already within the de- 
partment’s control. 
To this end millions of dollars are 
being expended on park building. When 
some of the improvements contemplated 
have been completed, the borough’s res- 
idents will be in a position to point with 
pride to parks and parkways as fine as 
those to be found anywhere. 
Including Prospect Park, the bridge 
approaches and the various playgrounds, 
Commissioner Kennedy has some 1,134 
acres of park land to care for. He has 
jurisdiction, also, over many miles of 
parkways and streets. To handle all 
this territory is a pretty big job, the 
commissioner finds. It’s a task with 
many loose ends to pick up, and Mr. 
Kennedy is kept so busy at it that he is 
not anxious to acquire any more park- 
land and parkways or streets. Instead, 
all the money he can abstract from Pa 
Knickerbocker’s pockets he is putting in- 
to circulation by buying steel and con- 
crete for bridges, or paying laborers 
wages for planting new trees, or by 
laying out gardens, or putting up stout 
buildings where the public may learn all 
the wonderful things about parks. 
Out on the Bay Ridge Parkway the 
commissioner is building a road bridge 
carrying the parkway under First Ave. 
It is of granite, with concrete interior. 
It is nearing completion and will be 
the finest structure of its kind in Brook- 
lyn surpassing in every detail anything 
to be found along the Riverside Drive 
in Manhattan. The work of building it 
was started in May, 1910, and the cost 
is about $90,000. The presence of the 
Pennsylvania freight station and yards 
between the parkway and the water 
front made the improvement necessary. 
Along with the work of building this 
viaduct, regrading, plotting, seeding, re- 
EUROPEAN LINDEN IN PROSPECT 
PARK. 
soiling, and other improvements are 
being made, so that a garden spot will 
soon be in view to passengers on boats 
in the bay. 
In conjunction with this improvement 
is another and greater one — the improve- 
ment of the Shore Road. The founda- 
tions for a massive sea wall have been 
built, and during the fall the work 
of erecting the wall was begun. This 
will take 250 working days — nearly 
a year’s time — for land must be filled 
in between the foundations, which are 
some distance off shore, and the pres- 
ent shore line. The contract for this 
initial work calls for the expenditure of 
$275,000. 
The whole Shore Road improvement 
is going to cost the city about $1,800,- 
000. It will be at least 1916 before tbe 
plans can be carried out. The result 
IN BROOKLYN 
will be one of the most beautiful shore 
drives in the world. There will be one 
road uniformly fifty feet in width, with 
another, eight or nine feet wide, nearer 
the waterline, with parking space be- 
tween the driveways. The wall will 
extend from Bay Ridge avenue to Nine- 
ty-second street, a distance of some 7,- 
900 or 8,000 feet. The Shore Road 
Commission originated the scheme be- 
fore consolidation and the designer was 
the late Frederick Law Olmsted, who 
also designed Central and Prospect 
parks. 
Commissioner Kennedy is proud of 
his big trees. Among them are 100 Eu- 
ropean lindens. These were imported 
and set out about forty years ago. They 
are fine and well-grown, have a wide 
spread, and the highest ones are sixty 
or seventy feet. Seventy-five horse- 
chestnut trees were planted about the 
same time. J. J. Levinson, the depart- 
ment arboriculturist, has charge of 
these trees. The lindens require little 
attention, but the horsechestnuts are 
subject to insects — and the biggest are 
two-legged human ones who wreak 
damage each year in their eager search 
for chestnuts. 
The little things count in making up 
the architectural beauty of the parks, 
and Commissioner Kennedy takes no 
little pride in the flights of granite 
steps near the Fiftieth street entrance 
to Prospect park. They are thirty feet 
broad and are the only steps of their 
type anywhere in Brooklyn parks. It 
cost $10,000 to build them. 
William J. Zartmann, superintendent 
of Parks, has the general supervision of 
all these improvements, and he has on 
his list for 1912 a number of others. 
The girls’ playground in McCarren Park, 
to cost $50,000, will be completed next 
year ; the boys’ section, costing $100,000, 
will be ready for use this fall. Fort 
Greene Park has been scarcely touched 
in fifty years and Superintendent Zart- 
mann has plans in mind for improving 
this park shortly at a cost of $45,000. 
The park will be entirely remodeled, 
new drainage and irrigation systems will 
he installed and portions of it will be 
restricted at night so that small people 
cannot destroy valuable foliage. Then, 
