PARK AND CEMETERY 
and Landscape Gardening. 
VOL. XIV CHICAGO, JANUARY, 1904 No. 11 
Boston Metropolitan ParKs. 
The Metropolitan District of Massachusetts in- 
cludes Boston and some thirty-seven independent mu- 
nicipalities located within a radius of about ten miles 
from Boston. 
Certain interests of the inhabitants of this district 
were and are inter-related. Sewage, 
water and parks are committed to 
the jurisdiction of separate district 
commissions. 
Boston and other cities and town- 
ships have their local boards of 
park commissioners. To briefly re- 
view several stages of the progress 
in park construction certain of these 
politically separated municipalities 
have made and to indicate some 
phases of the greater undertaking 
of the Metropolitan Park Commis- 
sion is the purpose of the following- 
notes. 
In preparing these notes, liberal 
use of official documents, and many 
extracts from them, have been 
made. These extracts are usually 
from memory, hence we omit the 
usual signs of paraphrasing and, 
instead, make this general acknowl- 
edgment. 
An excellent harbor influenced 
the early settlement of Boston. 
Fresh-water streams having sources 
beyond the municipal district limits 
flow over rock and various forms 
of soil, and wind their way between 
hills to the harbor. 
The Boston basin is irregularly 
bounded by a chain of high hills and 
is of a rugged and uneven surface 
conformation. Within this basin is located the Met- 
ropolitan District, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean. 
Except water areas and occasional clearings of the 
Indians, the early settlers of this basin found the land 
covered with an unbroken primeval forest. Until the 
colony increased largely, settlement was always in 
close proximity to the sea or waterways. The trend 
of expansion was along the valleys. On land, traffic 
communication sought easy grades, and bordering 
these ways, which later developed into streets, build- 
ings were constructed. Many of these old lines of 
communication are to-day marked by narrow, cir- 
cuitous streets and alleys in the older part of the city 
of Boston. Increasing population extended the area 
of settlement from Shawmut peninsula northwest to 
