SUBURBAN STATION GROUNDS 
By CHARLES MULFORD ROBINSON 
T O the commuter using a suburban rail¬ 
way the erection of pretty stations and 
the beautifying of their grounds is a matter 
of great concern. It means the extension 
ot the home atmosphere quite to the rail¬ 
road track. When he steps off the train he 
is at home,—as tar as the soothing calm of 
a lovely scene can make him, — without 
having still a quarter mile of dreary trudging 
before there comes heart’s-ease. 
'There is something in this, tor the com¬ 
muter’s ideas are expansive. His house is 
wider than it he were in town, and it has a 
little garden 
around it; but 
even this in¬ 
crease of space 
is not enough 
for him. Con¬ 
sider how the 
landed pro¬ 
prietor s— 
heartless spec- 
u 1 a t o r s or 
mere corpora¬ 
tions though 
they be — 
have found it 
financially 
worth while, 
in the larger 
returns they 
get, to give to 
the tract a pretty park-suggestive name ; and 
so to lay out its streets and develop them that 
the whole district shall be garden-like and 
beautiful. It is not less to the railroad’s interest 
than to that of the original proprietor ot the 
land that the community should be well liked 
and populous. The railroad, then, is doing 
no more than its share, no more than it owes 
to itself, in making its part of the town— 
which is also the town’s official entrance— 
attractive. And when it does this, it does 
much tor the commuter;—its own gain is 
dependent upon his—pleasing even his ex¬ 
pansive ideas. It makes his home seem 
considerably nearer his office, and that means 
a great deal to railroad and to commuter. 
But to the vast traveling public, whizzed 
through the suburban stations at unchecked 
speed, the attractiveness of the setting is 
really of very little moment. The through 
passengers at that time are thinking, in a dis¬ 
tributive or collective way, of satchels and 
umbrellas, and if they should have a thought 
tor architectural or gardening design as ap¬ 
plied to railroad stations their study would 
reward them with little more than a blur. 
In hopeless jumble of name-sign and porte- 
cochere, bag¬ 
gage truck and 
crimson ram¬ 
bler, perspec¬ 
tive and pro¬ 
portion would 
be annihilated. 
The travelers 
would be little 
wiser than if 
they had de¬ 
voted them¬ 
selves whole- 
heartily to 
satchel and 
umbrella. 
For this 
reason a dis¬ 
cussion of how 
any particular 
road has developed any particular stations is 
of general interest and value only in the 
suggestiveness of the examples. The ques¬ 
tion may be of immense interest to the 
commuters directly affected, and to the resi¬ 
dents of the rival stations ; but they make a 
small part of the traveling or the reading 
world. The applicability of the selected ex¬ 
amples to other regions can alone make them 
of general interest. 
This is the standpoint, then, from which 
properly to approach an account of how cer¬ 
tain station grounds that are unusually suc¬ 
cessful have been developed. Such examples 
WABAN STATION BOSTON & ALBANY R.R. 
